Tricks on the Dead

Tricks on the Dead 潛龍之殤

An Epic Film about Chinese Laborers Shipped Across Canada to WW I in Europe

Showtime: November 28, 2018 – 7:00PM

100 min.

Directed by: Jordan Paterson

Starring: Bradley Duffy, Mackenzie Gray, Steve James, Zhang Yan

Screenwriter  Jordan Paterson, Natasha Damiano

Cinematography Jordan Paterson, Norm Li, CSC

Not Rated. No gratuitous violence, no nudity or profanity

In Chinese and English with English subtitles.

An award winning film documenting the forgotten story of a group of Chinese peasants who were sent to a war they didn’t understand.

The First World War erupted in 1914. By 1916 Allied powers had suffered devastating casualties. As a result British, French and Chinese governments formed an agreement to send almost 140,000 Chinese laborers to the battlefields of Europe. 85,000 of these men were locked in CPR train cars and shipped in miserable conditions across Canada at a time when Canada was imposing a head tax on Chinese to prevent them from immigrating to Canada.

Using unseen archive footage, interviews, and visually rich re-enactments the film follows Zhang Yan as he searches to restore the collective memory of those in China and around the world who have largely forgotten about the 140,000 men who made this journey 100 years ago.

‘History is nothing but a pack of tricks we play on the dead.’ – Voltaire