April 1, 2009 Special Screening of Historic Movie “Hero” at the Library Promotes Cultural Understanding

Academy Award-nominated motion picture “Ying xiong” (“Hero”) made cinematic history in 2002 as the most expensive and highest-grossing Chinese film ever made. It also became the first foreign-language film to open No. 1 at the box office in the United States in 2004.

A special screening of the movie will be held at the Library of Congress at 7 p.m., Friday, April 3, in the Pickford Theater, located on the third floor of the Library’s James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave., S.E., Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Library and the Film Foundation, the non-profit organization founded by Martin Scorsese to promote awareness of film preservation, the show is free and open to the public. For information about reservations call (202) 707-5677 during business hours. For further information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/pickford/.

Starring Jet Li as the nameless protagonist, the movie tells the story of a plot to assassinate one of the rulers of the six warring kingdoms in ancient China before the reign of its first emperor. Movie critic Roger Ebert described “Hero” as “beautiful and beguiling, a martial-arts extravaganza defining the styles and lives of its fighters within Chinese tradition.”

The public screening of the film is part of a series of activities for the Film Foundation’s International Film Classroom, a program that uses American and Chinese films to teach film literacy; promote relations between American and Chinese filmmakers, preservationists and educators; and create models and materials to help educators use film to promote cultural understanding.

The Film Foundation was established in 1990. It is dedicated to protecting and preserving motion-picture history, and provides substantial annual support for preservation and restoration projects at the nation’s major film archives.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. It seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its Web site at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a new, personalized Web site at myLOC.gov. The Library’s unparalleled collection of American and foreign-produced films is preserved at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, its state-of-the-art preservation facility in Culpeper, Va., which was made possible through the generosity of David Woodley Packard and the Packard Humanities Institute.