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<\/a><\/p>\nProbably China\u2019s most important unofficial historian-filmmaker, Hu Jie documents with his camera episodes that Chinese official history, for now, ignores. Spark was an underground magazine published in 1960 by four young intellectuals who wanted to expose the devastating famine caused by Mao\u2019s Great Leap Forward, a horrendous period of national suffering that is still unmentioned in China\u2019s history textbooks today. This is filmmaking as urgent historical investigation: with a shoestring budget Hu combines years of research, and a knack for getting people to talk without fear about the most taboo subjects in China\u2019s recent past. His alternative oral history approach knits together courageous and frequently moving interviews with the magazine\u2019s surviving editor, supporters, and readers, who were ready to sacrifice themselves to alert their countrymen to unprecedented disaster.<\/p>\n