Home Ā» In Hong Kong, China also suffocates cinema – Ilaria Maria Sala

In Hong Kong, China also suffocates cinema – Ilaria Maria Sala

by admin

26 August 2021 16:16

Not only has Hong Kong reintroduced film censorship, with a new law that will make illegal films that contravene the national security law, but it has also been stipulated that previously approved films, shot years ago, will have to be screened by censors first. to be able to land in commercial halls, universities, schools or other places open to the public. The work of the censors for the moment is enviable: they will be able to sit in a private cinema to watch many films. But it ends there, it is neither enviable nor respectable that it is up to them to decide that some of these films may contain elements of “secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces”.

For an anarchic film industry like that of Hong Kong, which since the first decades of the last century has reached its peak thanks to being able to make films that was not possible in China, this is a brutal blow. Of course, now the brutal blows are countless. It’s not like you get used to it, but everything deteriorates so quickly that dismay gives way to a sort of constant apprehension of everything that is upset.

Six years ago, when the movie came out Ten years, we could not talk about anything else: ā€œYou have seen Ten years? ā€,ā€œ Did you see it? ā€,ā€œ And you, did you see Ten years? “. It was not just the question of those who saw it first and want to give themselves a certain tone, but the fact that seeing it was not easy, because after about three weeks of sold out, it was no longer shown in commercial theaters. This despite its critical and box office success, and the fact that it was the most impactful film in Hong Kong cinematography at a time when it seemed short of ideas.

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The Chinese press had criticized him, and therefore already then (six years have passed but today it seems a thousand) the film was boycotted from commercial theaters. A bit like Hollywood films that want to be sold in China (despite all the limits imposed by Chinese censorship) and therefore avoid themes or actors unpopular with the Beijing government, so are Hong Kong distributors, often active on the Chinese market or hoping to be, they stayed away from Ten years. And therefore it was necessary to frantically exchange information on spontaneous projections that took place in private rooms, or on outdoor walls – five years ago all this was still possible.

Shortly after, a Facebook page was created where the screenings were indicated, and since even those were all sold out in a short time, on April 1, 2016 thirty different places in Hong Kong showed it at the same time, and then there was an online discussion with one of the directors. . It comes to say: what times.

Composed of five shorts shot by five different directors, it was, in 2016, the interpretation of a Hong Kong that seemed unthinkable, crushed by controls; where the local language, Cantonese, was replaced by government order by the language imposed by China, Mandarin; and where children, trained by patriotic schools, attacked their fathers if they dared, for example, to sell “local eggs” in their grocery store. And where a pro-democracy demonstrator sacrificed herself, after nothing else had attracted the attention of the authorities.

Attachment to anything “local” was seen as a sign of little affection for China, the absolute motherland that had to wipe out any kind of love for Hong Kong as a culturally diverse entity.

A worrying future
The film was released a year after the 2014 demonstrations, organized by the umbrella movement (Occupy central), ended. He spoke to those who were desperate for a government that had left adolescents on the street, day and night, for three months asking for universal suffrage, without ever accepting a dialogue with them. I tell all this because the ax that struck Hong Kong together with the pandemic arrived in a sky that had not been clear for years, but this did not mean that sunny days were expected to become a utopia.

A friend of mine from mainland China, who we will call Yiyun here even if it is called in another way, reacted all in all without surprise, saying: ā€œDo the same! We will watch movies on the Internet. It has been like this in China since I was born and independent directors have existed the same ā€. For those accustomed to Hong Kong cinema, this is an idea that you may have to get used to, but first you have to recover from the horror.

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The retroactive censorship will certainly allow you to see the films on sites hosted outside Hong Kong as Yiyun says, but the anguish this causes is not small. And what space does the future leave? Will Hong Kong films be shot overseas? With what budget, with which audience? And it’s not just that. In 1997 at the Hong Kong Film Festival (which was still the most important in Asia, before the slow eroding of freedoms, which has now become very rapid) it was decided to broadcast all the films that the British had censored in their 150 years of power. colonial over Hong Kong.

The list is interesting: in 1997, for example, it was shown for the first time The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo, who according to colonial censorship “puts colonialism in a bad light” (one would laugh). But even then films were banned so as not to anger China: Dersu Uzala, by Akira Kurosawa, was censored because it could give the impression of being on the side of the Soviet Union in the dispute with China on the border. A dispute in which the British did not want to enter. From a distance, it may seem a kind of poetic justice, a closing circle. Hence, the attack on the artistic and creative industry, in all its aspects, shows that what China wants to unify is the thinking of those who live in Hong Kong. And as far as I know, people like Yiyun, who manage to remain critical and independent in spite of everything and everyone, are very rare.

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