Research results in lucky discovery for Sino-American filmmaker

She discovered a 35-minute version of the movie－50 minutes shorter than the full cut－at the National Archives of the United States in Washington, and then set about searching for descendents of Rey Scott, the cameraman who shot the movie, to collect their stories about the documentary.

Lung finally found one of Scott's sons, and they discovered a complete 85-minute copy of Kukan in the basement of his house.

With the help of historian Zhou Yong, director of the Research Center for the Anti-Japanese War in the Unoccupied Area in Chongqing, the film had its first screening in China at a seminar in the city in July and attracted huge interest.

Now Lung is working on Finding Kukan, a documentary that will tell the story of the film and its creators, Li and Scott.

"During the late 1930s, when Li Ling-Ai first conceived of the project, prejudicial laws against Chinese were still in effect in the US. So Kukan is an inspirational example of a brave Chinese woman who dared to be a cultural producer and create positive change in the world, even though she faced many obstacles," she said.

Scott's granddaughter, visual artist Michelle Scott, said the family was largely unaware of Kukan until Lung made contact.

"(The movie) was passed among the four brothers (Rey's sons) after he passed away, and finally ended up in storage at my father's house. Rey was so humble, and he never made a big deal of his accomplishments to his family (at least, that's what my father told me), and I think for that reason it just sat with the piles of his other photos for a while and no one gave it much thought," she said.

Lung's new documentary is now in post-production and is expected to be finished next year. She plans to screen it at theaters across the US, in China and at major international film festivals. She also plans to release it on video-on-demand platforms, such as Netflix and Youku, the Chinese equivalent of YouTube.

"If Finding Kukan has even one-hundredth of the impact that the original film had (and is still having), all the hard work will have been worth it," she said.

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