A War Story
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A War Story
''A War Story'' is a 1981 Canadian docudrama produced, written, and directed by Anne Wheeler. It tells the story of her father Major Ben Wheeler when he was captured by the Japanese during the Second World War. The film also shows the Japanese perspective as it shows the harsh, inhuman treatment of the POWs. During that time, A Japanese soldier would kill himself before allowing himself to be taken prisoner. This cultural difference caused the Japanese to look at captured soldiers as having no honour. At the end of the film, as the Americans arrived to liberate the camps, many of the Japanese guards at the camp committed suicide rather than become prisoners. Plot Major Ben Wheeler was a Canadian doctor assigned to Singapore when the Japanese forced an unconditional surrender of the British in 1942. The movie recounts, through the pages of his diary, the traumatic experiences of himself and his comrades as POWs in the Kinkaseki POW camp (a mining labour camp in northern Taiwan) ...
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Anne Wheeler
Anne Wheeler, OC, (born September 23, 1946) is a Canadian film and television writer, producer, and director. Biography Graduating in Mathematics from the University of Alberta she was a computer programmer before traveling abroad. Her years of travels inspired her to become a storyteller and when she returned she joined a group of old friends to form a film collective. From 1975 to 1985 she worked for the NFB where she made her first feature film, ''A War Story'' (1981), which was about her father, Ben Wheeler and his time as a doctor in a P.O.W. camp during World War II. The war is a common theme in her work and she revisited it later in her films '' Bye Bye Blues'' (1989) and ''The War Between Us'' (1995). Her first non-NFB film was '' Loyalties'' in 1986. In addition to her films, Wheeler has directed episodes of ''Anne with an E'', ''Private Eyes'', ''Strange Empire'', ''The Romeo Section'', ''The Guard'', '' This Is Wonderland'', ''Da Vinci's Inquest'', and ''Cold Squa ...
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Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Strait of Malacca to the west, the Singapore Strait to the south, the South China Sea to the east, and the Straits of Johor to the north. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet; the combined area of these has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. It has the third highest population density in the world. With a multicultural population and recognising the need to respect cultural identities of the major ethnic groups within the nation, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. English is the lingua franca and numerous public services are available only in Eng ...
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Canadian World War II Films
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''Canadian''. Canada is a multilingual and multicultural society home to people of groups of many different ethnic, religious, and national origins, with the majority of the population made up of Old World immigrants and their descendants. Following the initial period of French and then the much larger British colonization, different waves (or peaks) of immigration and settlement of non-indigenous peoples took place over the course of nearly two centuries and continue today. Elements of Indigenous, French, British, and more recent immigrant customs, languages, and religions have combined to form the culture of Canada, and thus a Canadian identity. Canada has also been strongly influenced by its linguistic, geographic, and ec ...
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War Adventure Films
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties. While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic or ecological circumstances. Etymology The English word ''war'' derives from the 11th-century Old English words ''wyrre'' and ''werre'', from Old French ''werre'' (also ''guerre'' as in modern French), in turn from the Frankish *''werra'', ultimately deriving from the Proto-Germanic *''we ...
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Films Directed By Anne Wheeler
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound and, more rarely, other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it. Recording and transmission of film The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects. Before the introduction of digital production, series of still images were recorded on a strip of chemically sensitiz ...
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English-language Canadian Films
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
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Canadian War Drama Films
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''Canadian''. Canada is a multilingual and multicultural society home to people of groups of many different ethnic, religious, and national origins, with the majority of the population made up of Old World immigrants and their descendants. Following the initial period of French and then the much larger British colonization, different waves (or peaks) of immigration and settlement of non-indigenous peoples took place over the course of nearly two centuries and continue today. Elements of Indigenous, French, British, and more recent immigrant customs, languages, and religions have combined to form the culture of Canada, and thus a Canadian identity. Canada has also been strongly influenced by its linguistic, geographic, and eco ...
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1981 Films
The following is an overview of events in 1981 in film, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies and festivals, a list of films released and notable deaths. Highest-grossing films (U.S.) The top ten films released in 1981 by box office gross in North America are as follows: Events * May 16 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires beleaguered concurrent United Artists. UA was humiliated by the astronomical losses on the $40,000,000 movie '' Heaven's Gate'', a major factor in the decision of owner Transamerica to sell it. * March 30 - The 53rd Academy Awards are postponed due to the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan earlier that day. They are held the following day with a message from the President recorded for the ceremony prior to the assassination attempt. * June 8 - Marvin Davis acquires 20th Century Fox for $720 million. * June 12 – '' Raiders of the Lost Ark'' is released by Paramount Pictures. It became Paramount's highest-grossing film of all ...
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Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands, with a combined area of . The main island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', has an area of , with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanised population is concentrated. The capital, Taipei, forms along with New Taipei City and Keelung the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Other major cities include Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries in the world. Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the isla ...
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Kinkaseki
Jinguashi (Chinkuashih; ) is a town in Ruifang District, New Taipei City, Taiwan, notable for its historic gold and copper mines. It was also known as Kinkaseki in Japanese and was under Taihoku Prefecture during Japanese rule. From 1942 to 1945, the town was the location of the Kinkaseki Prisoner of War (POW) Camp (Chinese: 金瓜石戰俘營; Japanese: 金瓜石/きんかせき捕虜監視所). Of the 430 Allied POW deaths across all fourteen Japanese POW camps on Taiwan, the majority occurred at Kinkaseki. Under Japanese rule Kinkaseki was an important mining town for the Japanese Empire during Japan's rule over Taiwan. United States Navy analysis during World War II found that the Kinkaseki gold mines were among Imperial Japan's largest sources of gold, based on figures from 1937. The mines also produced substantial amounts of copper—7,350 tons in 1936, more than anywhere else in Taiwan—and some silver. The mines were operated by Taiwan Kōgyō K.K. (Taiwan Minin ...
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Ben Wheeler (Canadian Doctor)
Major Ben Wheeler was a Canadian doctor in the British Army stationed in Singapore in 1942 when British forces unconditionally surrendered to the Japanese on February 15, 1942. He was imprisoned by the Japanese in Singapore and later moved to the Japanese colony of Formosa (now Taiwan) with other British prisoners of war (POWs). He was a camp doctor in each camp in which he was imprisoned. He survived the war and settled in Edgerton, Alberta, Canada. Biography Ben Wheeler was a Canadian doctor who joined the British Indian Army as a doctor in the late 1930s with the rank of major. Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was posted to Singapore. In 1942 when British forces unconditionally surrendered to the Japanese on February 15, 1942. He was imprisoned by the Japanese in Singapore and later moved to the Japanese colony of Formosa (now Taiwan) with other British POWs. Wheeler was sent to the prison camp at Kinkaseki in northern Formosa, where the prisoners we ...
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Tom Radford
Tom Radford (born March 12, 1946) is a Canadian documentary filmmaker from Edmonton, Alberta.Tom Murray"Tom Radford" ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'', March 22, 2010. A cofounder with Anne Wheeler and P. J. Reese of the Filmwest Associates studio, Radford is most noted for films on the history, culture and politics of Western Canada. Born in Edmonton, Radford was the son of diarist Gertrude Hogg and the grandson of a former editor of the ''Edmonton Journal''. He studied Canadian history at the University of Alberta, but left halfway through his master's program to begin working on his first documentary film, ''Ernest Brown: Pioneer Photographer''. The film won the Golden Sheaf Award for Best of Festival at the Yorkton Film Festival in 1973; in 1975, he won both Best of Festival and Best Director at Yorkton for ''The Man Who Chooses the Bush''. In 1980 Radford left Filmwest to launch the Northwest Studio of the National Film Board of Canada, serving as executive producer of the divis ...
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