KUALA LUMPUR: RMS Titanic, the world's most famous sunken ship in the modern era has an untold story, involving six Chinese men who were saved from drowning.
Their stories will finally come to light in The Six, a documentary film created by American historian Steven Schwankert with the support of 1997 blockbuster film Titanic's director James Cameron.
Entertainment portal AsiaOne reported today that The Six, which has just premiered in Chinese cinemas, is produced by Cameron with Schwankert as its main researcher.
The 97-minute documentary film directed by Arthur Jones is set to reignite global interest in the Titanic, which sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, the United Kingdom to New York, the United States.
More than 1,500 of the estimated 2,224 on board were killed.
Schwankert, who has lived in China for 30 years, said that releasing The Six there made sense as the 1997 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet became China's highest grossing film back then.
Schwankert, a maritime historian added that the story of the Chinese Titanic passengers was too good to ignore.
"Eight Chinese men were on board and six survived, landing in New York three days later aboard the Carpathia, the first ship to arrive at the scene of the disaster," he said.
Under the US' Chinese Exclusion Act , the men were transferred 24 hours later to a British steamship and sent to Cuba. What happened after that has been unclear — until now.
The 97-minute film traces Lee Bing, Fang Lang, Chang Chip, Ah Lam, Chung Foo and Ling Hee. The two believed to have perished in the disaster were Lee Ling and Len Lam.
"Our team of international researchers uncovered — after tracking down the passengers' descendants — a story of survival in the face of institutionalised racism," said Schwankert.
"It's a reminder that we had race problems more than 100 years ago and, unfortunately, we're still facing these problems today."
The Six was scheduled for release in April last year, but the coronavirus pandemic caused its postponement.
Schwankert said that the final scene of Cameron's movie, showing Jack (DiCaprio) and Rose (Winslet) — who was rescued from a piece of floating wreckage — was inspired by a real event where Fang Lang was rescued.
Schwankert hopes to find a distributor for the film in Hong Kong and the East Asian region.
"We're also looking at streaming services so we can reach a wider audience," he said.