Manfred Durniok

An honorary citizen of the City of Beijing, in addition to being one of the few Westeners to have visited China over a hundred times, as friend and colleague, he was also one of the few international dignitaries to be personally invited to Shanghai on 31 December 2002 by the Chinese government for the first ride on the Transrapid between Pudong Airport and Shanghai Central Station: Manfred Durniok ­ in photo above at the Shanghai station (courtesy Durniok). At 400 km/h the Transrapid needed only eight minutes to cover the 32 kilometers from the airport to the train station.
       Asked about his latest project, a film about master spy Richard Sorge, Durniok said he spent a decade raising the funds to get the German-Japanese coproduction off the ground. Richard Sorge (1895 - 1944), a German communist who became a Party member in 1919, was commissioned by the Soviet Union to work as an undercover spy in the Far East. He became a legend in his profession of secrecy when, in May of 1941, he informed Moscow in advance of the German invasion, a report the Soviet leadership could scarcely believe. Five months later, in October of 1941, Sorge was arrested in Tokyo ­ and hanged in 1944. How Sorge was able to ferret out the information he sent on to Moscow has always been a matter of speculation, although it is known that he was a ladies’ man and was having an affair with the German ambassador’s wife in Tokyo. Japanese director Masahiro Shinoda, who previously directed Die Tänzerin (The Dancer) (1988), a German-Japanese coproduction for Manfred Durniok, is directing Richard Sorge ­ The Spy of the Century, a three-hour production for cinema and television. The film was shot in Germany, Japan, China, and Russia.

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