China's plea on 'banned' films

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

TOKYO, SEPT. 9. China is back again to being unusually finicky about its image in foreign film festivals. It has asked the Fukuoka International Film Festival - which begins on September 14 - not to screen two movies that have been banned in China. Mr. Jiang Wen's ``Devils on the Doorstep'' and Mr. Wang Xiaoshuai's ``Beijing Bicycle'' have, while winning laurels abroad, fallen foul of China's leadership.

Mr. Wen's work - which clinched the Grand Prix at Cannes in May 2000, talks about a Chinese peasant who is forced to look after two war prisoners, one of whom is a Japanese. The story is set in a small Chinese village occupied by Japanese forces during World War I. It is a gripping tale in black and white narrated through powerful close-up shots.

Even at Cannes, an attempt was made to cancel the screening of ``Devils on the Doorstep'', but the Festival Director, Mr. Gilles Jacob, brushed aside the request from Beijing saying that Cannes was not the arena to fight out political battles. Rather, it was a place to appreciate the fine art of cinema, and the political leanings of a director were of little concern in an event that was organised to showcase one's skill and dexterity in this 20th century medium.

Now, Fukuoka has put forth the same argument, though here in this case it probably called for greater guts, given Tokyo's worsening relationship with Beijing on the heels of the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Junichiro Koizumi's controversial visit last month to the Yasukuni Shrine, where his country's war dead, including Class A war criminals, are honoured. China, which faced Japanese brutality during the wars, saw in the visit a covert view to glorify military aggression and nationalism, saw in the visit an unrepentant attitude for a blood-soaked imperialist past.

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Section  : International
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