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本帖最后由 vivicat 于 2009-8-11 12:36 编辑
Film Festival in the Cross Hairs
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/movies/10festival.html?_r=2&ref=asia
David Crosling/Associated Press
Supporters of the Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer at the Town Hall in Melbourne, where Ms. Kadeer was visiting a film festival on Saturday. Others protested Ms. Kadeer’s appearance.
By DAN LEVIN
Published: August 9, 2009
BEIJING — The Chinese flag that defaced the Melbourne International Film Festival’s hacked Web site on July 25 came with a warning: “We like film but we hate Rebiya Kadeer! We like peace and we hate East Turkistan terrorist! Please apologize to all the Chinese people!”
A week later 400 Internet users, many traced to China, knocked out the ticketing system on the site, melbournefilmfestival.com.au, in a series of attacks that made it appear as if 125 screenings at the Australian festival were sold out. The cyber assaults and other actions were a protest against the appearance of Ms. Kadeer, the Uighur leader, at a screening on Saturday of “The 10 Conditions of Love,” a documentary about her life.
The Chinese government has accused Ms. Kadeer of inciting the ethnic violence between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in the Xinjiang region of northwest China that claimed at least 197 lives last month. Ms. Kadeer, who lives in exile in the United States, has denied any involvement.
Yet the controversy served only to bolster interest in the film and Ms. Kadeer’s appearance. To meet the demand, festival organizers moved the film’s sold-out premiere to the city’s 1,500-seat Town Hall, where on Saturday a dozen pro-China demonstrators were vastly outnumbered by the line of ticketholders waiting to see the film. Although Ms. Kadeer entered through the back, and the police intervened between some pro-Chinese-government and pro-Uighur protesters outside, the screening went smoothly.
Nevertheless the campaign against the festival, which ended Sunday, is raising concerns among Westerners — and some Chinese — over whether the intimidation will have a lasting effect on global artistic expression as China grows increasingly assertive on the world stage.
Chinese government officials had demanded that Australia “immediately correct its wrongdoings” by canceling the screening and Ms. Kadeer’s visa. When those requests were ignored, the Chinese government threatened on Friday to sever Melbourne’s sister-city ties with the Chinese city of Tianjin.
Seven Chinese-language films from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan were withdrawn, their directors saying the festival had become too politicized. One filmmaker, Tang Xiaobai, said that the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television had alerted her about the Kadeer film but denied she was forced to boycott the festival, according to China Daily, the official English-language newspaper.
In Melbourne festival organizers complained of being harassed outside the organization’s offices and receiving a flood of angry e-mail messages and faxes, including death threats and photos of dead kangaroos. Festival publicists told of receiving frightening phone calls in the middle of the night.
The festival added security and reported losing about $50,000 because of the hacking, which prevented patrons from buying tickets. Some members of the Melbourne City Council, apparently fearful of the potential economic impact of China’s threats, supported banning the film, according to The Age, an Australian newspaper.
Richard Moore, the festival’s executive director, said he worried that the episode might dissuade other festivals from scheduling films that could offend Chinese sensibilities.
“They’re going to have to think about the issue of self-censorship if they are more interested in avoiding disagreements with countries like China,” he said.
Other festivals around the world have already withdrawn support for the film, said its director, Jeff Daniels. “Where does this stop?” he asked. “This is just a film festival. What’s next?”
The outrage over the screening follows a wave of activism prompted by riots in Tibet last year, when many Chinese protested what they saw as rampant anti-China bias in the Western media. To them inviting Ms. Kadeer to appear so soon after the blood was washed off the streets of Urumqi amounts to an endorsement of her alleged role in the violence and an insult to the Chinese people.
Zhou Yu, a 24-year-old computer programmer from Nanjing, said he hacked into the festival’s Web site and defaced it with a Chinese flag to defend his country’s honor. “The government’s protests were useless,” he said by e-mail. “It’s patriotic to use my own skills as a common citizen to fight back.”
Mr. Zhou said that while he had not seen “The 10 Conditions of Love,” he believed the film was factually inaccurate. “This movie distorts history, confuses and poisons people’s minds and impacts national unity,” he said. His actions have drawn widespread praise from many Chinese, although there seems to be little room for divergent views on the matter. On Kaixin, a popular social-networking Web site here, a recent poll asked visitors to weigh in on Mr. Zhou’s actions but gave only two choices: “support” and “super support.”
The episode throws into sharp relief the deep divide over how many Chinese and Westerners view artistic expression.
Rebecca MacKinnon, an assistant professor in the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center, noted that for generations film, theater and literature had been little more than tools in the Chinese government’s propaganda arsenal. Many Chinese, she said, simply have no firsthand experience of uncensored art.
“This is part of a larger argument about whether true creativity and artistic expression are possible under authoritarian regimes,” she said.
Such views, of course, are not universal. Zhang Xianmin, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, said it was “ridiculous” that Chinese directors pulled their films from the festival. “Film is a way to share and communicate ideas,” he said.
But film is also a business, one that is becoming increasingly lucrative in China, even if the government strictly controls which movies make it to the screen and often censors their content.
According to official data the box-office take here grew an average of 25 percent annually during the past five years. Last year ticket sales soared by 30 percent to about $629 million.
For filmmakers dependent on the booming mainland market, which includes those from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the prospect of financial ruin may be reason enough to heed the government’s expectations.
“If you were a Chinese director whose films could live or die by approval of the film bureau, and it took the trouble of bringing this to your attention,” said Jonathan Landreth, The Hollywood Reporter’s Beijing correspondent, “would you not connect the dots?”
Other film festivals are watching the events in Melbourne closely, although many organizers said the uproar would have no impact on their selections. “Film festivals are a way to encourage discussion and make people aware of what’s happening in the world,” Mark Fishkin, executive director of the Mill Valley Film Festival in California, said.
Last year the Chinese government asked Mr. Fishkin to remove the film “Fire Under the Snow,” a documentary about a Tibetan monk who was imprisoned in China for 33 years, from the festival lineup. He refused.
While China will most likely continue to pressure festivals and filmmakers, Mr. Fishkin said he hopes such efforts backfire. “The Chinese could receive so much negative publicity over this that as a member of world community it may just not be worth it,” he said. “But I may just be playing the optimist.” |
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发表于 2009-8-11 11:15
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