Red Reign: The Bloody Harvest of China's Prisoners

LOS ANGELES - Sept. 26, 2013 - PRLog -- LOS ANGELES, CA (Sepetmber 10, 2013) –Red Reign: The Bloody Harvest of China’s Prisoners reveals the horrific story about China’s practice of harvesting organs “on demand,” from its prisoners, specifically practitioners of a spiritual practice known as Falun Gong. The documentary features interviews with human rights lawyer, David Matas and Canadian Parliamentarian David Kilgour, who wrote a 2006 report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour-Matas_report) which revealed this practice to the world. Matas was nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for this report. The film will be available on DVD and VOD platforms on September 24, 2013

“This story had to be told, yet the story seemed almost too horrible to tell,” says first-time filmmaker Masha Savitz. As a journalist for Epoch Times, she first learned about Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners who were imprisoned for their beliefsin China starting in late 2000. In 2008 she met Matas who was internationally known for his work as first a Nazi hunter and then as an advocate for refugees, immigration rights, and  the prosecution of war criminals from South Africa to Bangladesh.  She learned about his fact-finding into the allegations that the Falun Gong prisoners were being executed, on command, in order to harvest their organs which were then transplanted into waiting patients.

They kept in touch over the years and by 2011 she was convinced she had to make the film.  She began filming without any funding in place, paying for the film by taking second and third part-time jobs.

For Savitz, like Matas,her Jewish upbringing had a tremendous impact on her connection to the story about a people systematically killedfor their religious beliefs.  Savitz travelled to Israel to interview doctors of  patients who had acquired organs, including a heart, in China. Organ trafficking was outlawed in Israel in 2008. According to Wikipedia, research indicates that the illegal organ trade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_trade) is on the rise, with a recent report by Global Financial Integrity estimating that the illegal organ trade generates profits between $600 mill and $1.2 billion per year.

Since the Matas-Kilgour report, while not revealing exact figures, the Chinese government has not denied the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners. They have taken steps to address international concerns regarding both the State's reliance on executed prisoners for organ donation and the illegal trading of these organs, which in 2005 they acknowledged had occurred. They have consistently denied the allegations of removing organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. (Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China )

And yet, the testimonies in Red Reign: The Bloody Harvest of China’s Prisoners emphatically indicate otherwise.

SYNOPSIS:

Red Reign examines the shocking evidence of forced organ harvesting of China’s prisoners of conscience, the practitioners of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong, a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhism and introduced to the public in 1991, was banned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1999. Hundreds of thousands of practitioners were arrested, imprisoned and brutally tortured if they did not recant their beliefs of 'truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.' In 2006, a report by human rights lawyer David Matas, as well as David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian Parliament, alleged that Falun Gong prisoners were being killed in order to harvest their organs for the lucrative government-run transplant business.

Filmmaker Masha Savitz zeroes in on the efforts of the Nobel Prize nominee David Matas, who wrote the book ‘Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong.’ Featuring interviews with Matas, David Kilgour, victims of the Falun Gong persecution and several doctors who share chilling transplant testimonies, as well as  filmmakerswhose films on the topic was effectively quashed by the CCP in Canada, Europe, and the US, Red Reign makes a stunning case. An international story of tangled politics and economics intentionally suppressed by the Chinese, Red Reign shows how a large scale persecution of a minority people can still happen in our modern day society.

TRAILER https://vimeo.com/74732550 | www.redreignfilm.com | https://www.facebook.com/redreigndoc



DVD TECHNICAL DETAILS: USA | Documentary | Unrated | 62 minutes | Directed by Masha Savitz | CLS 1180

| 881394118027 || DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Trailer

DIGITAL ASSETS:

Clips & trailer album on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/album/2532197

DVD box art LR: http://www.cinemalibrestudio.com/clscatalog/2013/red-reign_3d-lr.jpg

DVD box art HR: http://www.cinemalibrestudio.com/clscatalog/2013/red-reign-3d-hr.jpg

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