The 400 Million

The war between Japan and general Chang Kai-shek's China is the subject of a reportage-film made to inform people about a little known conflict and to provide a global image of China and its recent history. Ivens arrived in Hong Kong on February 8th 1938. The following nine months of shooting were marked by strict censorship. Chang Kai-shek's administration was well aware that Ivens supported the Chinese cause, but they didn't want his film to reveal the internal division of power: on one side Chang Kai-shek and his army, on the other the Communist party and Mao Zedong. “Whether I wanted it or not, I was caught up in their workings. Our film had been patronized by the General and financed by a group of conservative Chinese bankers, but my idea was to serve the cause of Chinese people and of the party that was able to express their aspirations: the Communist Party”. Although The 400 Million (whose title suggests the number of Chinese in 1938) met with the favour of the critics, it didn't have an easy distribution. The film marked Ivens’ first contact with the country that mostly affected his artistic and human experience, as he remembered in his last work, The Wind and I, fifteen years later.