Bringing King to China

Caitrin tries to build a cultural bridge between the U.S. and China by staging a play about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for Chinese audiences.

Bringing King to China is a 2011 documentary film by Kevin McKiernan. The cinematographers include three-time Oscar-winner Haskell Wexler.

The documentary is "a fathers love letter to his adult daughter, a young American woman struggling to bring Martin Luther King, Jr.s dream of nonviolence to China, and then back to the United States. Her life is thrown into turmoil when she learns, mistakenly, that her father, a journalist covering the war in Iraq, has been killed by a suicide bomber."

Bringing King to China conveys the lead characters "dream to build a bridge between the societies by talking about peaceful struggle and universal rights." It chronicles her struggle to interpret and adapt Kings message for Chinese society, preserve the historical accuracy of the U.S. civil rights movement, clear bureaucratic hurdles before opening night and raise funds to pay the theater company. The film takes American viewers backstage at the National Theatre Company of China, as Chinese actors rehearse with African-American gospel singers.

The film premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and won best documentary at the Ventura International Film Festival and the Tulsa International Film Festival. In 2011, it was scheduled to screen at film festivals across the US, including DOCNYC and the St. Louis International Film Festival. Commentators called the film timely, noting it premiered in the lead-up to the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Bringing King to China is a father's "love letter" to his adult daughter, a young American woman struggling to bring Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of nonviolence to China, and then back to the United States.