On March 5, 2002, practitioners of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong hacked China’s state-run television in order to broadcast videos exposing their persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP condemned the act as a hijacking by “enemies of the state.”
Falun Gong is as far removed from “enemies of the state” as one could possibly imagine. Combining slow-moving exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, the spiritual discipline aims to help practitioners attain spiritual enlightenment.
For the first few years after Falun Gong was introduced to the public, the CCP even actively promoted it, due to its beneficial effects on public health. But the CCP suddenly changed tack in the late ‘90s, when the practice’s membership grew to more than 70 million by the regime’s estimates.
In July 1999, the CCP launched a full-blown suppression of the spiritual practice and instructed its propagandist television arm to begin airing highly negative, thoroughly false information about what the group stood for and its benign and peaceful mission.
Just how far the CCP would go to quash Falun Gong is detailed in the first act of the animated documentary “Eternal Spring.”
Nothing Lost in Translation
Determined to set the record straight, roughly a dozen Falun Gong practitioners began meeting in secret to determine the best possible way to do so. “Best” is subjective here, as all the participants knew going in that there would be no foolproof option, and all of them understood the possible dire consequences of their actions.Their base of operations was in Changchun, the capital and largest city in the northeastern province of Jilin. The literal English translation of Changchun (长春) is “eternal spring.”
One of the participants in the film project was Daxiong (born Guo Jingxiong), a Changchun native and a multiple award-winning comic book artist whose work provides the basis of the film’s animation, which was produced by animators Carl Beauchemin and Alex Smith.
In addition, Daxiong appears in the live-action portions, telling us of his own experience while also interviewing Jin Xuezhe, one of the surviving participants, who made it out of China and now lives in South Korea. Daxiong transcribes Jin’s responses in the form of illustrations, which act as on-screen storyboard lead-ins to the animated portions of the film.
This highly unorthodox narrative choice might take a little getting used to, yet it’s handled with seamless precision by two-time Canadian Screen Award-winning cinematographer John Tran (“Our Man in Tehran,” “Borealis”) and editor David Schmidt.
You know you’re in for a treat with the five-minute opening title sequence, in which some of the participants are identified via pop-up headshot icons within a single uninterrupted shot, reminiscent of those displayed in Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil” and Robert Altman’s “The Player.”
There are also portions of the film that would usually be included as bonus features on hard-copy home video releases, such as footage of Daxiong working alongside CGI technicians and offering advice on tweaking images based on his own in-the-flesh memories of the events, as well as international archival news footage.
Canadian director Jason Loftus (“Ask No Questions”), who also wrote and co-produced the documentary, has been working on the film for close to six years.
Usually, it takes rearview-mirror reflection and sometimes years of assessment to label any work of art a “masterpiece,” yet “Eternal Spring” is exactly and immediately that.
Accolades Aplenty
The industry awards and accolades for “Eternal Spring” are already beginning to pile up. Thus far, it has been nominated 15 times at 11 film festivals, winning a staggering 11 awards, including two each at the Hot Docs Canadian Festival, the Lighthouse International Festival, the Mammoth Lakes Festival, and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in Greece.Last month, “Eternal Spring” was named Canada’s official submission to the 2022–2023 Academy Awards ceremony in the Best International Feature category. It’s entirely possible that it could also be considered for the Best Animated and Best Documentary Feature categories, a feat matched only by “Flee” from 2021.
An Ominous Warning
To refer to “Eternal Spring” as a cautionary tale would be a purblind understatement and a shortsighted, undervaluing minimization of its importance as both a work of art and treatise on the effects of an oppressive state-run entity on the human condition.In the totalitarian view of the atheist-espousing, intolerant CCP, anything that even remotely goes off-script, however docile and apolitical it might be, is deemed to be an eminent threat and needs to be eliminated with swift, unrelenting prejudice. Those who come to rule with iron fists exhibit their paranoia in much the same way as a high school bully. They prey on those who pose no risk to them, however negligible and passive.
Their “enemies” merely have a differing position as to how they view the world. If the CCP was truly confident that their way was the best, it would have no issues with Falun Gong. The spiritual practice wasn’t and still isn’t looking for a way to overthrow the CCP. All its adherents want is the right to express their spiritual and moral beliefs.
What is most disquieting about what happened in China just over 20 years ago is how little the world in general, and we as Americans, have learned from it. This same exact thing took place in April 1775 when a few handfuls of colonial patriots decided enough was enough.
Our free speech and religious rights are being slowly eroded and removed by an administration that promised unity, like a death by a thousand cuts.
We need to pay better attention to what went down two decades ago in the far away province of Jilin. It’s getting closer and closer to reaching our own front doors.
