Film sings praises of national anthem

Kristina Grigoryan, a young filmmaker from Turkmenistan, recently sparked an outpouring of acclaim on Chinese internet with her short animation film about China's national anthem, March of the Volunteers.

In the eight-minute documentary, titled The Song of New China, she tells of how the composition came into being during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), became a beacon of hope for Chinese people and spread around the world after being performed by American singer and political activist Paul Robeson.

She made the film as a member of the Shanghai edition of the 2021 Looking China International Youth Film Project, a cultural exchange program aiming to tell the stories of China through the lens of young people overseas with a view to promoting cross-cultural communication.

This year, the project asked its participants to produce a short film on the theme of "family, homeland and nation", each paired with a Chinese producer.

Grigoryan got her inspiration from her supervisor in the project, Odet Abadia Gomez, who, during a museum visit, learned the story of the Chinese anthem and recommended the subject to the project's participants.

Grigoryan and her producer Tian Hongmin were immediately fascinated by the idea and started working on the documentary.

They went on field trips to historical sites, gathered text material of more than 100,000 words and restored thousands of photos, finally completing the short film using the technique of stop-motion animation.

"During the filming process, I have gained a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese history. I am practically half of a historian now," Grigoryan told Xinhua News Agency.

The Weibo hashtag "foreigner popularizes Chinese national anthem" made the trending list on Monday, with a total of 15.74 million views. Her documentary was reposted by various media organizations. In a post of China.org.cn alone, her video was viewed more than 1.17 million times.

Under the post, the comment with the most "up votes", posted by Weibo user Xiujidelaochao, says: "The video is so informative. I have learned for the first time that Paul Robeson, a foreigner, sang the Chinese national anthem, and he sang it so well. Our national anthem is both beautiful and meaningful."

The project's Shanghai edition was hosted by the Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture and Huilin Foundation of Beijing Normal University, and organized by Shanghai Vancouver Film School and the School of Journalism and Communication at Shanghai University.

Within 17 days of the Shanghai project, eight young directors from different countries, including the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Ukraine and South Africa, completed their assignments and screened their works with a collective presentation at the project's closing ceremony at the Shanghai Vancouver Film School.

"In this year's event, young foreign directors and Chinese producers have interpreted and explored the concept of 'home' in a variety of ways, from the inside out, from the past to the future," Jiang Weimin, executive dean of Shanghai Vancouver Film School, said at the closing ceremony.

"This year's directors are all very creative and gave these seemingly ordinary themes a unique scope of imagination with their ingenious visions."