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  1. #76
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    And the winner is...

    It's nearly impossible to be a-political anymore, but when a doc is very political, well, we'll see what the Academy thinks tonight...

    Film on 2019 Hong Kong protests vies for Oscars, riles China
    Do Not Split does not shy away from the violence of the protests, but at its heart is the emotional toll on the young people struggling to protect the city they love.


    Do Not Split's Oscar nomination has riled China [Anders Hammer/Courtesy of Sundance Institute]
    By
    Kate Mayberry
    25 Apr 2021
    Growing up in Hong Kong, Joey Siu imagined she might become a secondary school teacher, but two years ago, as pro-democracy protesters filled the streets of the Chinese-ruled city, she found herself taking a different path.

    Siu joined the rallies as a student activist, but quickly took on a more prominent role in the movement, advocating for international help and speaking regularly to the media.

    Then, in June last year, China imposed the National Security Law – broadly worded legislation it said was necessary to deal with secession, terrorism, subversion and “collusion with foreign powers”.

    Overnight, social media accounts were closed, pro-democracy groups shut down. The protests, already quietened by the coronavirus pandemic, evaporated.

    Some chose exile. Siu agonised for weeks about what to do.

    “I never really thought about leaving Hong Kong this soon,” the now-21-year-old told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC, where she eventually settled in October last year. “I always thought I would have a career in Hong Kong, and a future and that it would be the city I would live in permanently.

    “[But] I realised if I chose to leave Hong Kong, I could do more for Hong Kong.”

    The tumultuous political developments in the Chinese territory, Siu’s own growth as an activist and the emotional toll on the protesters as they struggle for the city they love are at the heart of Do Not Split, the 35-minute film by Norwegian director Anders Hammer that is in contention for best short documentary at the Oscars on Sunday.

    ‘No way to defend ourselves’
    Described by Variety as “visceral, up close and personal”, Hammer went down to the streets to film alongside the protesters and capture not only the unpredictability of the protests, but their raw emotion.


    A still from Do Not Split by Anders Hammer, which has been nominated for an Academy Award [Anders Hammer/Courtesy of Sundance Institute]
    From its opening with a group of black-clad protesters breaking into a Chinese-owned bank, to a group of police officers pushing a protester to the ground, flattening his cheek to the tarmac, his shirt ripped off, and his belly exposed, the film does not flinch from the increasing violence of the confrontations between police and protesters.
    Throughout there are clouds of tear gas, sprays of water cannon and the putt-putt of rubber bullets.

    Siu remembers how the protesters struggled with how to deal with the police’s escalating response.

    “When the movement first broke out most of the protesters, including myself, were new,” she said. “We did not know how to deal with tear gas, rubber bullets and everything.”

    At first, the police gave the crowds the space to disperse and return home, but then their tactics changed, she remembers.

    Protesters often found themselves boxed in under volleys of tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets. Some protesters were shot with live ammunition.

    The government had also made clear those arrested could be charged with rioting, an offence punishable with a jail term of as many as 10 years.

    “There was really no way to defend ourselves, other than by also deploying a certain level of force,” Siu said.

    Emotional toll
    Hammer arrived in Hong Kong in June 2019, and – apart from a quick trip back to Norway to collect more gear – spent weeks on the ground.

    While some of the violence was disturbing – Hammer points to the standoff with police at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which was besieged in November – it was the spirit and determination of the protesters that most affected him.

    “Seeing the stress, the desperation and how protesters were trying to still keep hope even though it was becoming more and more difficult for them to protest and they could see very clear signs that Hong Kong was developing in the opposite way than they were fighting for,” he told Al Jazeera.


    Anders Hammer on location in Hong Kong filming, Do Not Split. He decided to go onto the streets, build trust with the protesters and film alongside them [Courtesy of Oliver Haynes]
    “They wanted to protect and keep the city as they knew it and they were fighting against this closer relationship with Beijing. And they were protesting because they felt their basic democratic rights were disappearing.”
    Hammer gives space for the protesters to talk about their motivations and their sense of betrayal.

    “The British handed us over to China like a bag of potatoes,” one says of the United Kingdom, which ruled Hong Kong as a colony until 1997.

    Siu is shown wrestling with the psychological impact of the unfolding events.

    “When our own city is decayed, [and] falling apart,” she tells Hammer. “What is the point of us thinking about our future.”

    The 2019 protests began against a Hong Kong government plan to allow suspects to be sent for trial in mainland China, where the courts are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

    A million people marched through the streets of the city on June 9, and nearly double that the following week – the biggest protest in the territory’s history – but it was not until September that chief executive Carrie Lam finally withdrew the bill.

    ‘Dark times’
    The rallies did not emerge out of nowhere, however. Hong Kong people had long been chafing at Beijing’s tightening grip.


    At the handover, the country’s Communist Party leaders had promised to respect the territory’s rights and freedoms – unknown in the mainland – for at least 50 years.

    Before the 2019 protests, the biggest demonstration in the territory had been 16 years earlier against plans to introduce a national security law, which were then dropped by the government.

    Demands for universal suffrage – a key demand of the 2019 protests – and the right to choose the city’s leader have periodically erupted into mass demonstrations, notably in 2014 when tens of thousands joined a peaceful 79-day sit-in in the heart of the city, after Beijing declared the territory did not have autonomy.

    “I felt this was one of the most important events in international politics at the time,” Hammer said of why he decided to go to Hong Kong in 2019. “I still think it is.”

    The protests had already cooled even before the National Security Law was imposed, but critics have said the legislation has effectively criminalised even legitimate forms of political dissent.
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    continued from previous post



    Protesters with a petrol bomb in a still from, Do Not Split. While Anders Hammer’s film shows the violence of the protests, he says he was most affected by the emotional and psychological stress that the protesters felt [Anders Hammer/Courtesy of Sundance Institute]
    In January, some 50 politicians, activists and academics were arrested in police raids over a primary election they had organised in July 2020 to help the democratic camp choose the strongest candidates for a Legislative Council election that was then delayed.

    Since then, Beijing has rewritten the rules on the territory’s elections to ensure only “patriots” can hold office.

    “I feel sorry for Hong Kong,” Hammer said, noting that two of those arrested appeared in his film. “These are dark times. The developments we are covering in the documentary in the sense that the room for democracy is shrinking have just continued.”

    The continuing crackdown, which has even ensnared veteran lawyer and politician Martin Lee who helped draft Hong Kong’s post-colonial constitution, has further deepened divisions between China and western democracies including the United States, the UK and European Union.

    China anger at Oscars
    Unsurprisingly, the Oscar nomination for Do Not Split has caused upset in Beijing.

    An article in the Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled tabloid, dismissed the film as a “fake” documentary that “lacked artistry” and was “full of biased political stances”. Nominating such a film would “hurt the feelings” of Chinese audiences, it said.

    The Oscars will not be shown on the mainland, while the Hong Kong broadcaster TVB blamed “commercial” reasons for its decision not to broadcast the ceremony for the first time in more than half a century.

    “Our main aim in making this documentary was to bring attention to the critical situation in Hong Kong,” Hammer said. “Ironically, the censorship of the Oscars and the attention brought to our documentary has resulted in more stories about the critical situation in Hong Kong so Beijing is helping us.”


    Joey Siu testifies during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration in December. The hearing was held to examine Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement through US refugee policy [Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images via AFP]
    Siu now works at international advocacy group Hong Kong Watch, where she has addressed politicians in the US and further afield on the situation in Hong Kong, which she is convinced China wants to make into just “another, ordinary mainland Chinese city”.
    She is worried about the place she was forced to flee, but finds comfort in the new ways people in Hong Kong are resisting, and that democratic governments appear increasingly willing to defend and stand up for their values and way of life.

    “I am pretty motivated and encouraged to see, that either here in the States or in other countries, like in Europe, people are starting to realise that this strategy we have been taking for years is wrong and that we have to be taking a much tougher and also more comprehensive approach to deal with China,” she said.

    It is a long way from the quiet life of a teacher.

    SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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    Revolution of Our Times


    Cannes Screens Bombshell Hong Kong Protest Doc as Late Addition to Official Program

    The festival's inclusion of 'Revolution of Our Times,' a hard-hitting chronicle of police brutality during Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests in 2019, is certain attract the ire of China's ruling Communist Party.

    BY PATRICK BRZESKI, ALEX RITMAN
    JULY 15, 2021 5:00AM

    Umbrella-wielding student protestors clash with police on the streets of Hong Kong. DEAR BROS
    The Cannes Film Festival made a bombshell, last-minute addition to its lineup this week, inviting select members of the international press to attend a “confidential” screening of Revolution of Our Times, a gripping, politically powerful documentary initially described only as being “about the protests in Hong Kong.” Until its unveiling in Cannes, the film’s existence was not publicly known.

    Revolution of Our Times has been scheduled to receive just one official special screening in Cannes, at 11 a.m. on Friday. The semi-secretive manner in which the film’s inclusion was announced initially aroused more curiosity in Cannes than its origins and subject matter.

    On late Wednesday, the festival sent an email to the international press stating that a “surprise documentary” had been added to the program. Earlier in the day, however, a small number of film reporters were invited to attend a “confidential” screening in the Palais’ Salle Soixantieme. The Hollywood Reporter‘s correspondent was among the approximately 10 people present at the discreet afternoon showing. The festival requested at the time that no news about the film be released until Thursday afternoon, Cannes time.

    As it turns out, the sensitivity surrounding the film appears warranted. Revolution of Our Times is a forensic and hard-hitting chronicle of the mass street protests that erupted in Hong Kong in the second half of 2019 — protests that were met with a brutal police crackdown, hundreds of arrests of activists and pro-democracy advocates, and the eventual imposition of near-total Chinese Communist Party control over the once-semidemocratic former colony. Thanks to Hong Kong’s expansive new National Security Law, imposed by Beijing in 2020, those involved in the new documentary could be subject to arrest and charges of subversion.
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    Continued from previous post


    A group of protestors, wearing raincoats to protect against tear gas, march down one of Hong Kong’s main thoroughfares during the 2019 pro-democracy protests. DEAR BROS
    Revolution of Our Times is directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Kiwi Chow, 42, best known as one of the directors who contributed to Hong Kong’s 2015 indie hit Ten Years, a sci-fi dystopian anthology film that gathered five shorts, each exploring different ways that Hong Kong might change under Communist Party rule by the year 2025. Chow’s contribution, titled Self-Immolator, was among the politically starkest of the collection, telling the story of an elderly Hong Kong woman who sets herself on fire in protest after witnessing a Hong Kong pro-independence protestor being brutally beaten by police. The segment was considered extreme at the time of its release, but the reality in Hong Kong quickly caught up with Chow’s vision.

    Revolution of Our Times uses extensive footage taken from the tumultuous events on the ground in Hong Kong in 2019, as well as interviews with a number of the activists involved (mostly done anonymously and with their faces disguised), to chart the growth of the pro-democracy movement. It simultaneously documents the sharp increase in police brutality as Hong Kong became engulfed in deadly street battles, including the 12-day siege of the Polytechnic University in November 2019. In one of the film’s most shocking moments, a body is seen being pushed out of a high-rise window, with Hong Kong authorities accused of kidnapping and murdering several of the movement’s central figures. The film is said to have been put together entirely in secret.

    “Over the past fifty years, Hongkongers have fought for freedom and democracy but have yet to succeed,” reads the synopsis for Revolution of Our Times. “In 2019, the Extradition Bill to China opened Pandora’s box, turning Hong Kong into a battlefield against the Chinese authoritarian rule.”

    Chow, it says, made this documentary to tell the story of the movement, “both with a macro view of its historical context and up close and personal on the front lines.”

    Aside from Chow, the film states that the majority of those involved in the making of Revolution of Our Times — understandably — use pseudonyms in the credits, with the producer going by “Dear Bros.” Ahead of the credits, it declares that Revolution of Our Times was made “By Hongkongers.”

    So far, Cannes organizers have offered no official explanation for the secretive and last-minute nature of Revolution of Our Times‘ addition to the festival program. But sources close to the festival have suggested that precautions were taken to protect the filmmakers.

    Industry attendees also have been quick to surmise that the screening of the film — however discreet — is all but certain to upset China’s ruling Communist Party, and could risk the attendance of Chinese films and filmmakers at future editions of the festival.

    Chow himself offered a statement of appreciation to the festival, writing: “I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Cannes. It is our honor to have the World Premiere of “Revolution of Our Times”, a film documenting the struggle of Hongkongers, at Cannes; and receive great attention. Hong Kong has been losing far more than anyone has expected, this good news will be a comfort to many Hongkongers who live in fear; it also shows that whoever fights for justice and freedom around the world, ARE with us! And Hongkongers are staying strong!”

    Cannes has frequently stood with filmmakers facing political persecution in their home countries, such as Iranian director Jafar Panahi (This Is Not a Film) and Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov (Petrov’s Flu), both of whom were under house arrest and unable to attend the festival when their films were screened.

    But Hong Kong’s protest movement has found precious few allies over the past two years, as Beijing has leveraged China’s outsize economic clout to attempt to punish any companies or individuals who dare throw their support behind democracy in Hong Kong.

    In October 2019, the NBA — the most popular and profitable U.S. sporting league in China by far — was banned from broadcast in the country for a full year after the Houston Rockets general manager at the time, Daryl Morey, put out a single, seven-word tweet voicing support for Hong Kong’s movement. (“Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”)

    In August that same year, Chinese actress Crystal Liu, star of Disney’s China-set action tentpole Mulan, created an international backlash when she voiced her support for the Hong Kong police force’s crackdown on protestors. The activist movement in Hong Kong called for a boycott of Mulan, but Disney, an ardent supporter of social movements in the U.S., such as Black Lives Matter, remained completely mum on the topic of democracy in Hong Kong. Many analysts pointed out at the time that the entertainment conglomerate would very likely see its multibillion-dollar Shanghai Disneyland theme park shuttered by Beijing if it were to speak out on the issue.

    Hong Kong politics also are believed to have resulted in the 2021 Oscars ceremony being totally blocked from broadcast in mainland China and Hong Kong earlier this year. Broadcasters and regulators never supplied a reason for the mysterious suspension of the awards show in Greater China, but many connected to the industry believe it was intended as retribution for the Academy’s nomination of the Hong Kong protest film Do Not Split in the best short documentary category (past critical comments made by Oscar best director winner Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) about her home country also irked the authorities).

    Beijing has moved with alarming swiftness to crush the Hong Kong movement featured in Revolution of Our Times. The repressive National Security Law put in place in the territory last year has resulted in the arrest of over 100 activists and opposition politicians. The crackdown also has had the intended effect of driving protestors overseas or into a state of self-censorship, as a chill has swept through the city’s creative community and civil society as a whole. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong school curriculum has been rewritten to teach fealty to the Chinese Communist Party, books have been banned, and pro-democracy journalists arrested at their jobs.

    In July, The Apple Daily, a popular Hong Kong newspaper that had allied itself with the pro-democracy cause, was forced to close after its offices were raided by Hong Kong police and five of its editors and executives arrested. The CCP said in a statement that the publication had abused “so-called freedom of the press.” The Apple Daily‘s outspoken founder, Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, was arrested last year and remains in prison facing charges of national security offenses that carry a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.

    A recent rewriting of the censorship rules governing Hong Kong’s film industry, once a bastion of cinematic vitality — and the home to Bruce Lee, Wong Kar Wai, Stephen Chow, Jackie Chan, Johnnie To and scores more — will ensure that Revolution of Our Times can never be screened freely in the city.
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    3 years...

    This is what was feared when HK turned over to PRC in 97...

    Aug 24, 2021 1:09am PT
    Illegal Film Screenings to Be Punished With Three-Year Jail Terms Under Hong Kong Censorship Law


    By Patrick Frater


    Courtesy of Celestial Tiger Entertainment
    Hong Kong is to introduce a new film censorship law that could send anyone responsible for illegal screenings to jail for up to three years. Offenders could also be liable to a HK$1 million ($128,000) fine.

    The new law is intended to codify national security concerns that were introduced into the city’s film classification ordinance as recently as June.

    The moves were announced by the government’s commerce secretary Edward Yau at a press conference on Tuesday.

    As well as codifying the Film Censorship Authority’s powers and duties regarding national security, the new law will allow the government to appoint an official representative to the Board of Review and do away with non-official members.

    It will also cancel a film distributor or exhibitor’s right to appeal against a board decision if the decision is made on national security grounds.

    Although the government has said that the July 2021 National Security Law does not have retrospective effect, the new film censorship law appears to have retroactive impact and undo existing classifications of past titles.

    It will “empower the Chief Secretary for Administration to direct the Film Censorship Authority to revoke certificates of approval or certificates of exemption previously issued for films if their exhibition would be contrary to the interests of national security.”

    That means that films such “Ten Years,” a dystopian portmanteau film made in 2015 that predicted how everyday Hong Kong life would under the yoke of mainland Chinese rule, could soon be banned.
    Hong Kong has witnessed unprecedented social and political turmoil since mid-2019 when the government attempted to introduce a law allowing extradition to mainland China. After a year of civil disobedience and violent clashes between police and pro-democracy forces the mainland government silenced protests by injecting the National Security Law into an annex of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.

    Since that time, the city’s election and education systems have been upended and a trades union disbanded.

    In the entertainment and media sector, pro-Beijing media have pressurized exhibitors to cancel screenings of a documentary about the 2019-20 protests, the public broadcaster RTHK has been neutered and the city’s leading pro-democracy newspaper has been bankrupted.

    The film censorship law will receive a first and second reading in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council on Wednesday next week (Sept. 1). Opposition politicians have all resigned, meaning that the pro-government majority is certain to get its way.

    Yau said the law was necessary for “more effective fulfilment of the duty to safeguard national security as required by the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as well as preventing and suppressing acts or activities that may endanger national security.”
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  6. #81
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    censorship

    Hong Kong
    Hong Kong protests: filmmakers decry new law that could censor a moment in history


    Protesters demonstrate outside the Hong Kong police headquarters in June 2019. A new law could see documentaries of the protests banned over national security concerns. Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images
    The 2019 protests spawned documentaries that may never see broad release amid growing intolerance of anything linked to the fight for democracy

    Helen Davidson in Taipei
    @heldavidson
    Tue 2 Nov 2021 20.25 EDT

    When the DVD came back shattered, it felt like a sign. The creators of Hong Kong protest documentary, Inside the Red Brick Wall, had sent it to regulators for a screening approval, as they’d done numerous times before without issue. But this time the returning envelope was filled with silver shards.

    “We didn’t understand why, but it was intentional,” one of the anonymous creators says. “They said it was broken by the DVD machine but it was intentional – it came back in pieces. It felt intentional, like they were sending a message.”

    The screening was approved, but with a higher rating restricting audiences to people aged 18 and over. But the moment marked a significant shift.


    Protesters march on the streets in June 2019 against an extradition bill that would allow people to be sent to mainland China to face their judicial system. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP
    A few months later, in March, the theatre hosting the first commercial screening of the protest film cancelled on the day. Then the government-backed funding body, the Arts Development Council of Hong Kong, reportedly withdrew a major grant from the independent film collective that had released it.

    The incidents underline the growing intolerance from authorities to anything related to the pro-democracy movement, which wracked the city for much of 2019. In June 2020, Beijing imposed its national security law which vaguely criminalised acts as foreign collusion, sedition, secession or terrorism. Since then police have used it to arrest hundreds of journalists, politicians, campaigners and activists, and make risky the selling of particular books, artworks, and films.

    ‘Clear political censorship’
    On Wednesday last week, Hong Kong’s parliament criminalised politically sensitive film-making, with a law allowing broad censorship under the guise of national security. The new law bans any films the government deems could “endorse, support, glorify, encourage and incite activities that might endanger national security”, and allows officials to stop productions and screenings. Any unauthorised screening of a banned film can incur three years in jail for those responsible, or a $1m fine.

    “The goal is very clear: it’s to improve the film censorship system, to prevent any act endangering the national security,” commerce secretary Edward Yau told the Legislative Council.

    Kenny Ng, associate professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University told Reuters the bill was “heavy-handed”. “Adding national security clauses to the bill is clear political censorship,” he said.

    Obvious targets of the law are the rush of protest documentaries released in the past 12 months. The documentaries show some of the protest movement’s most violent moments and follow individuals including some who were later arrested. Many were made by anonymous teams of likeminded people who met while filming on the frontlines of protests, and were inspired to tell a deeper story than international media.


    A promotional poster for When a City Rises, a documentary charting the Hong Kong protests that began in 2019. Photograph: Supplied
    “I think that was the moment I personally felt like this is the time we should start doing what a documentary film-maker should do,” says Iris Kwong, one of seven directors behind When A City Rises, which screened at the Brisbane International Film Festival over the weekend.

    “[Before then] I wasn’t going to make any films about the movement because it was something I felt like the whole world was already coming in to, so maybe I didn’t need to do it. It was a moment where I just wanted to be together with the rest of the city in this social movement.”

    Several film-makers tell the Guardian the new law doesn’t affect them much more than the national security law already did. Some have already gone to ground, working anonymously, while others have fled Hong Kong.

    ‘Risks to everybody involved’
    The biggest impact of the new censorship law, several say, will be on Hong Kong’s status as an international film hub and the city’s rich catalogue of lauded, thoughtful and often political films. Last week’s law allows Hong Kong’s security chief, John Lee Ka-chiu, to ban the screening of existing films if he determines they threaten national security. The one most often cited as a likely target is the 2015 film 10 Years, a dystopian and rather prophetic imagining of Hong Kong’s future, but there are many others.

    “We have so many films critical of governments, especially from before 1997 when we were still a colony of Britain,” says the Inside the Red Brick Wall film-maker.

    “It was OK to criticise the Chinese government at that time and many of our famous and iconic films are from before or around that time. So it would be a huge thing if they decided to ban those films too, because they’re very culturally significant.”

    Many local productions were already partnering commercially with mainland Chinese companies, and there had been a trend towards complying with mainland sensitivities, some of the film-makers note. But what was once an issue of resources is now a matter of law.


    A national security law enacted in 2020 stifled major protests in Hong Kong. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP
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    “With Hong Kong being a hub for film-making, and most of which are really expensive to make, if your movie gets pulled that’s really bad,” says Kwong. “So I think what will happen is the impact of this law will mean more self-censorship for non-political films.”

    The Inside the Red Brick Wall film-maker says even in hindsight she and her team still would have made their film.

    When A City Rises won’t screen in Hong Kong because “there are risks to everybody involved”, says Kwong, but it will be shown in Australia and several European countries over coming months. Kwong hopes the film will help global audiences understand what happened in Hong Kong.

    “I think with any social movements around the world, there often isn’t a tonne that people can do, but what is worse is when people don’t know that it’s happening.”
    Any members here currently in Hong Kong?
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