On Tuesday film producers from China, the United States and Britain started to shoot a new movie on the Nanjing Massacre in the historic city. Nanjing, a Chinese city, witnessed one of the worst Japanese war crimes during its occupation 70 years ago.

Purple Mountain, a film adapted from Iris Chang's international bestseller, The Rape of Nanking, depicts the atrocities of 1937 and 1938 through the eyes of a middle-class Chinese mother and her daughter.

Gerald Green, the film's American producer, said he hoped it would have an impact on audiences similar to Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg's Holocaust film.

The producers have not yet revealed who will star in the film. This question has intrigued the public since plans for the new movie were announced last summer.

The Jiangsu Cultural Industry Group, based in Nanjing, and the Hollywood entertainment firm Viridian will produce the film. It will cost about 400 million yuan (US$52.8 million) to make, the Chinese producers said.

In December 1937 the Nanjing Massacre took place. Japanese troops occupied the then capital of China, killing an estimated 300,000 Chinese. The occupiers burned one third of the city's houses and raped more than 20,000 women.

The movie will be based on The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World World II, written by the late Chinese-American Iris Chang. The book was the first, full-length English-language narrative depicting the atrocity that reached a wide audience. In 1997 it became a New York Times Notable Book, and was cited by Bookman Review Syndicate as one of the best books of 1997.

US screenwriter William Macdonald wrote the screenplay. Chinese director Luo Guanquan, who shot China's first film on the Nanjing Massacre in 1987, is serving as the artistic director for the movie.
 
(Xinhua News Agency July 31, 2007)