ABSTRACT
My work on the documentary film In The Name of the Emperor (1995) began in the spring of 1992. A woman with whom I had never spoken, “Jennifer,” called me out of the blue to see if I were interested in doing a film on the Nanjing Massacre, as she had obtained some interesting documents. I said that I had heard about the incident from my grandmother while I was a child, but it really did not affect me much. She showed up in my office with a crate full of research material, which I flipped through. Much of it was interesting, but I did not think it was something I could use to make a film, because there was so much written material. I asked her if she had anything visual, photos or the like. She said that yes, in fact, a film had just been discovered: footage of the Japanese invasion shot by the Reverend John Magee, a missionary stationed in Nanjing. This film, which was in the process of being restored, had been sitting in the basement of David Magee’s (his son’s) house.
