Tiananmen film gets director 5-year ban

BEIJING - China has banned acclaimed director Lou Ye from making movies for five years as punishment for sending his latest film Summer Palace, an erotic love story set against the backdrop of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, to the Cannes Film Festival without government approval, official media reported today.

Lou, who suffered a two-year blacklisting in 2000 for his Rotterdam Film Festival winner Suzhou River, could not be reached for comment.

In a telephone interview, the film's French co-producer called the decision by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television "shameful."

"I am very sad that the Chinese public will not be allowed to see the fantastic love story," said Sylvain Bursztejn, the head of Paris-based Rosem Films.

Love story, sure, but it was the film's backdrop that caused trouble with the censors, who refused to review it for approval for Cannes, claiming that the print submitted was of poor quality. The director and producers said this was a groundless excuse by the state, used to avoid addressing the film's content.

Reviewing Summer Palace would have required censors to address the film's use of documentary footage of the social upheaval in 1989 that led to the deaths of hundreds and possibly thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators by China's army in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The events 17 years ago still officially are considered "counter-revolutionary" at the highest levels of the Chinese government.

Also banned from film work for five years by the film administration was Nai An, one of the two Chinese producers of Summer Palace, the only Palme d'Or contender from Asia this year, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

A senior film administration official confirmed the ban but declined comment.

Fang Li, the film's other Chinese co-producer was not named in the blacklisting, Bursztejn said.

Under the ban and according to China's Regulations on the Administration of Films, Lou and Nai will be barred from making films for five years, Summer Palace will be confiscated and a fine of five to 10 times the film's income will be levied, Xinhua said.

Summer Palace has not screened openly in China, and industry observers say that there is little chance it will ever make money here because of the strong likelihood that it will appear on Chinese streets soon in cheap pirated form, as have thousands of previous films deemed inappropriate for release by censors.

Director Jiang Wen's long-banned Devils on the Doorstep -- which got him barred from work for a time after he, too, sent the film to Cannes unapproved in 2000 -- recently appeared in a legal DVD edition that tones down the original film's frank portrayal of China's sore relations with Japan. Sales of the legal DVD have been poor because illegal, uncensored copies are available widely.

Summer Palace will make its North American premiere September 13 and 15 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Lou, who has called Summer partly autobiographical, said in June that he was preparing two new film scripts. He soon will leave China for a tour of US colleges, pending the approval of his visa, which was rejected once already last week, Bursztejn said.

Hollywood Reporter film critic Kirk Honeycutt described Summer Palace as "compelling," and he hailed the "powerful performance" of the film's star, actress Hao Lei.

- REUTERS/Hollywood Reporter