Oscar Preview: The Most Surprising Documentary Of The Year Is ‘Eternal Spring (長春 )’-Toni FitzgeraldContributor

Sometimes the best work stems from something unexpected. A few years ago, Canadian filmmaker Jason Loftus was working on a video game that required still art for some of the illustrations. He connected with Daxiong, a Chinese comic book illustrator who has worked on Justice League and Star Wars. The artist came to Loftus’ studio, and through small talk, they learned that Gong hailed from the same Chinese city as Loftus’ wife.

Daxiong revealed that he is part of the community of Falun Gong practitioners, whose rights have been threatened by the Chinese government for years. Loftus was familiar with the religious practice and knew practitioners had been persecuted unfairly for their beliefs. But he hadn’t heard stories like the ones Daxiong told.

The discussions between them led to a new documentary, Eternal Spring (長春 ), released this fall that has scooped up awards and is now on the long list for the Academy Awards as Canada’s international entry in the documentary division.

The subject of the film, the takeover of a Chinese state-owned TV station by members of the Falun Gong 20 years ago to protest actions by the government, is interesting all on its own. But the way Loftus presents it is the real intrigue of this film. The look into the past is 3D animation inspired by Daxiong’s work.

“My wife is a daughter of a middle-level government official in China. So hearing what was happening under her nose and her own hometown I think really hit home for her. She felt this is a story that was important for Chinese people to hear,” Loftus says. “I don’t know everything about the political situation in China, but I know that Falun Gong is banned. I could see one version of this community and group of people that I was witnessing firsthand. And then I was seeing a completely different narrative [from the Chinese government]. And I was seeing that narrative fueling very serious human rights abuses.”

“He was deeply impacted by it, and he has all these mixed feelings. He was supportive of the efforts to counter the government narrative about Falun Gong. At the same time, he felt like if you were poking the bear here, and the human cost was really high,” Loftus says.

Loftus saw a chance to educate people and do it in a different way. While there have been animated documentaries before—Spring has earned comparisons to last year’s Flee, which earned three Oscar nominations—they are rare.

The gamble has earned attention. Spring has earned awards at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Movies the Matter festival, Hot Docs in Canada and San Francisco Documentary Festival. Loftus is waiting to find out in the coming days if Spring will make the Oscar shortlist.

“That’s humbling and we’re gonna do our best to represent Canada, obviously, in that regard. At the same time, we also know [the attention] shines an additional light on this story, you know, which we feel very grateful for because you start to care a lot about these people who are depicted in the film, and the ability for their story to be showcased on a broader stage means a lot,” Loftus says.

Toni Fitzgerald

I covered TV and other media for 15 years at Media Life (RIP). Now I write and edit for businesses and magazines.

郭競雄：（1975年12月25日）筆名大雄，曾被大陸媒體譽為“動漫天王”，擁有百萬身價的中國漫畫家，談其創作挺川漫畫和《川建國》歌曲的背後故事。

大雄於1999年創辦長春旗卡通創作聯盟。其《戲畫聊齋》是北派漫畫的開山之作，2001年獲得《臥虎藏龍》的人物設定權。 2002年推出《清末四大譴責小說》繪畫本。 2008年一個三十歲左右、衣著樸素、臉上永遠帶笑，給人如沐陽光的感覺，外表如鄰家男孩的年輕人，奪下被稱作漫畫界“奧斯卡”的法國昂古萊姆漫畫節特別大獎，並成為簽約歐洲最大漫畫出版公司的第一個中國人。然而，有誰知曉，就是這樣一個才華橫溢、年輕有為之人，卻在奧運召開前夕被迫離開了故土，開始了海外的漂泊生涯…