Chinese director exposes tragedy 

A Chinese director hopes his documentary about the deaths of hundreds of children in the collapse of a shoddily built school during the Sichuan earthquake will provoke answers, but he doesn't expect any soon.

The devastating May tremor in southwest China killed 80,000 people. Many were children who had been napping or were at their desks in schools that crumbled while other buildings stood firm.

China vowed to punish those responsible after aggrieved parents blamed their children's deaths on substandard construction stemming from corruption and greed. No prosecutions have been reported yet and families have been pressured into dropping their complaints against local officials.

"Who Killed Our Children?", a feature-length documentary by 39-year-old director Pan Jianlin, records the anguish of parents whose children were entombed within the ruins of the middle school of Muyu, a village in the hill country of Sichuan.

"People have contacted my relatives and friends and told them to put pressure on me to stop my work," said Pan, whose film challenges the official story which focused mainly on the heroism of soldiers who rushed to the rescue of quake victims.

Pan, detained for two days when he returned to Sichuan in June for more research, says he can't really answer the question posed in the film's title. He worries it will never be clear.

"I don't know how many children died, but I know that they died wastefully," said Pan. "I'm absolutely certain the government has an unshirkable responsibility."

Pan, who went to Sichuan to help with relief work like thousands of other civilians, said quake damage in Muyu was mild, but the school had been reduced to "just a pile of bricks".

Seeing pigs digging at the shallow graves of children buried a few hundred metres from the school, and meeting a distraught local mother at a relief tent, set his mind to shoot the film.

"She said when the earthquake hit, the school was locked, and that the building was substandard, and the government had not been telling the truth. I felt this was very strange and I wanted to find out what was going on," Pan said.

He filmed tearful soldiers talking of cement and plaster that "crumbles in your fingers", parents accusing officials of understating the death toll by hundreds, and recriminations over a locked door that may have stopped students from escaping.

The climate of resentment and confusion in the aftermath of the quake was conducive to rumours, Pan admits. Some children's bodies were simply obliterated in the ruins, and others went home to remote villages, making accurate counts difficult.

But even as officials denied cover-up charges, they refused to release a list of the dead, officially numbered at 297.

Officials also dodged questions about the school's construction quality, but amid the books, pencils and scraps of clothing littering the school's ruins, parents plucked a report on the school's structural integrity.

Written in 2006, the report described "hazardous" buildings and cracked and buckling walls.

Pan's documentary was screened at a Pusan International Film Festival last weekend, but he doubts it will cause any soul-searching in China in the near future.

"There is zero chance of this film being shown here in the short term. The content is too sensitive," he said.