On November 1st, 1991, 28 year-old graduate student Gang Lu opened fire at the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City. He shot and killed five people using a revolver, leaving one woman paralyzed for life. In his final act of violence, he turned the gun on himself.
Months before the shootings, the China-born physics student wrote a series of letters to the University explaining his intentions. He was angry because his doctoral dissertation didn't receive the prestigious award he believed it deserved. When another student, Linhua Shan, won the award he became intensely jealous. Shan was among Gang Lu's victims that November day, including three physics professors and the university's vice president of academic affairs.
With the Virginia Tech shootings still fresh in our minds (it will have been one full year on April 16th), there is no better time for the release of Dark Matter, a film based on the events that led up to the University of Iowa shootings. Liu Ye stars as Liu Xing, an ambitious Chinese student who finds a mentor in cosmology department head Jacob Reiser (Aidan Quinn) and a friend in university patron Joanna Silver (Meryl Streep). But when university politics get in the way of Liu Xing's dreams, he becomes isolated to the point of no return.
Kiwibox had the opportunity to sit in on a press conference with Liu Ye and Director Chen Shi-Zheng. Here, they discuss some of the challenges they encountered while filming Dark Matter.
