Chi­nese film fes­ti­val pulls open­ing film at the last second

It seems that Hol­ly­wood can’t get enough of Chi­na these days, the trans-Pacif­ic exchange of mon­ey and high-gloss block­buster enter­tain­ment bring­ing the two enter­tain­ment economies clos­er than they’ve ever been. But as the Chi­nese movie biz expands out­ward at an expo­nen­tial rate, nation­als back on the home front have had a tougher go of shar­ing their work with the world.

Niche cin­e­ma site Chi­na Under­ground notes that Hu Guan’s lat­est fea­ture The Eight Hun­dred has been pulled at the last sec­ond from the Shang­hai Film Fes­ti­val, where it was set to debut as the open­ing film ear­li­er this week. While no offi­cial rea­son has been giv­en for the film’s unex­pect­ed removal, one may safe­ly assume gov­ern­ment intervention.

Guan’s predica­ment rep­re­sents the lat­est in a string of instances just like this, of Chi­nese films van­ish­ing from fes­ti­val sched­ules with­out warn­ing. Chi­na Underground’s item cites the exam­ple of One Sec­ond, the new film from Zhang Yimou that dis­ap­peared from this past year’s Berli­nale line­up. Not so long ago, Chi­nese cen­sors barred Feng Xiao­geng​‘s Youth from release in the coun­try days pri­or to the announced première.

In all three instances, pos­i­tive his­tor­i­cal depic­tions of the nation­al­ist par­ty may have gen­er­at­ed fric­tion with the cur­rent­ly dom­i­nant com­mu­nist par­ty, as they cel­e­brate the 70^th anniver­sary of their vic­to­ry over the nation­al­ists this very year. Films out of joint with the cur­rent cul­tur­al tem­per­a­ture have been forcibly reed­it­ed or barred from inter­na­tion­al exposure.

Chi­na Underground’s arti­cle also sin­gles out a post from Jia Zhang-ke, who was trans­lat­ed as com­ment­ing, ​“The film indus­try can­not be run like this”. His opin­ion will most like­ly be echoed by artists shar­ing in his incli­na­tion for soci­etal cri­tique, not to men­tion cinephiles the world over. A free and open cin­e­ma enrich­es and strength­ens its home nation’s cul­tur­al pro­file, dis­parag­ing or no.