Gate of Heavenly Peace. On May 28, 1989, just days before the massacre, American journalist Philip Cunningham interviewed one of the student movement’s most prominent leaders, Chai Ling. In this interview, Chai indicated that “the hidden strategy of the leadership group she dominated was to provoke the Government to use violence against the unarmed students. With statements [in the interview] like ‘What we are actually hoping for is bloodshed’ and ‘Only when the square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes,’ Ms. Chai denounced those students who sought to bring an end to the occupation of the square.” (op. cit.) The May 28, 1989 interview was undertaken at Chai Ling's request. She then asked Cunningham to release it internationally as her political statement on the student movement. The Gate of Heavenly Peace makes extensive use of this interview (necessitated in part by Chai Ling’s repeated refusal to be interviewed for the film). The filmmakers suggest that “the hard-liners within the government marginalized moderates among the protesters (including students, workers and intellectuals), while the actions of radical protesters undermined moderates in the government. Moderate voices were gradually cowed and then silenced by extremism and emotionalism on both sides.” In following the fate of these “moderate voices,” the film raises questions about some of the decisions that were made by a few of the student leaders. For this, the film was angrily condemned by many in the Chinese exile community, including Chai Ling herself. For example, in April 1995 – well before the film had even been completed (it premiered in October 1995) – Chai wrote, "Certain individuals, for the sake of gaining approval of the [Chinese] authorities, have racked their brains for ways and means to come up with policies for them. And there is another person with a pro-Communist history [Hinton] who has been hawking [her] documentary film for crude commercial gain by taking things out of context and trying to show up something new, unreasonably turning history on its head and calling black white." The notion of extremism on both sides (i.e., hardliners among the government and students) was not a view unique to The Gate of Heavenly Peace. In a review published in The American Historical Review in October 1996, Michael Sheng writes, “The filmmakers... interpret the [1989] movement with passion and intellectual vigor," noting that "angry voices from the Chinese exile community