From Wuhan to New York, Chinese independent film festivals have been abruptly shut down due to political pressure. How much space is left for China's indie filmmakers?
The organizer of a New York festival was forced to cancel after Chinese filmmakers pulled out and others faced harrassmentImage: Zhu Rikun
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Photos of empty cinemas have been circulating online in recent weeks — a form of protest staged by Zhu Rikun, curator of the New York–based IndieChina Film Festival, against what he called the Chinese government's crackdown on independent films.
The festival was canceled on November 6, just days before it was due to start, due to pressure from the Chinese government.
"I didn't notice any warning signs… In the festival statement, I even expressed hope that the festival could soon return to China. I didn't want it to become an event in exile," Zhu told DW.
Photos of empty chairs were used as a way of protesting pressure from BeijingImage: Zhu Rikun
He recounted that the pressure began with a call from his father who urged him "not to do anything harmful to the country." Soon after, almost all Chinese filmmakers withdrew their films and foreign guests faced harassment from unidentified individuals.
Back in China, the Wuhan Berlin Film Week also unexpectedly announced its cancelation, prompting speculation it, too, had faced pressure from authorities.
The move "demonstrates the Chinese government's aim to control what the world sees and learns about China," said Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a press release.
Why would China target an independent festival in the US?
Beijing has not issued any official comment regarding the cancelation in New York.
Certain films in the festival lineup, such as the 2019 Hong Kong pro-democracy documentary "If We Burn," could be seen by the Chinese government as controversial. However, most participating works did not touch on politics, yet their directors and collaborators still faced pressure.
Talking to DW, Zhu expressed anger and surprise that the event fell through, adding that the reasons may be personal.
"It's probably because of me. I may be the kind of person who cannot organize this type of event."
In the eyes of Chinese authorities, Zhu's previous works may be problematic — he had curated screenings of a famous Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, and also directed a documentary about himself, showing how police questioned him in a hotel.
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Indie filmmakers see their space shrink in China
Independent film festivals in China have faced intensifying crackdowns over the past decade, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 2011, the Documentary Film Festival China (DOChina), one of the country's most important independent film events, was canceled due to official pressure.
In the following years, China's three major independent film festivals across the country were raided or shut down. The crackdown intensified in 2014 when police raided the Beijing Independent Film Festival, seizing film collections and detaining organizers.
Movies to support 'national unity'
China's Film Industry Promotion Law declares that filmmakers must avoid producing content that could "harm national unity" or state interests. All films must be submitted for government review. Unlicensed works cannot be shown publicly, shared online, or submitted to festivals.
How Chinese art became political
Following the so-called Cultural Revolution, Chinese artists started exploring new forms of expression. Oftentimes they would run into considerable obstacles and challenges they had to work around or overcome altogether.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I. Langsdon
Ai Weiwei: "Mao" (1986)
Chairman Mao died in 1976. His death also marked the end of the Cultural Revolution. In the mid-1980s, modern artists started experimenting with the figure of Mao in their imagery - which at that time was still associated with considerable risks. Inspired by Andy Warhol's work, Ai Weiwei approached China's difficult relationship with Mao, the icon of the Cultural Revolution, in his "Mao Images."
Image: Getty Images/AFP/P. Crock
Geng Jianyi: "Two people under a light"
Geng Jianyi (born 1962) was one of the big avant-garde names in China's modern art scene. He was part of one of the 179 artists' groups that formed during the 1980s. For his thesis, he painted not this but another couple, but the painting was rejected as being too "cold," as it did not correspond to the positive image of the socialist person that the regime wanted to perpetuate. Geng died in 2017.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Ym Yik
Wang Guangyi: "Great Criticism" (1992)
Wang Guangyi (born 1957), was part of the "Group of the North" in the late 1980s, a group that focused extensively on Western philosophy writings. With his skilful combination of propaganda art from the Cultural Revolution with Pop Art aesthetics, his works became known as "Political Pop". "Great Criticism" is his best-known and -paradoxically - most commercially successful series.
Image: Imago/B. Strenske
Yue Minjun: laughing grimaces
Yue Minjun (born 1962) is also considered as a leader in China's avant-garde movement. He has long become one of those Chinese stars featured at international auctions. One can recognize his own facial features in his signature laughing grimaces. After the events on Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, his "Cynical Realism" approach helped shape the direction of the socio-critical artist movement.
Image: picture-alliance/ROPI
Fang Lijun: Cynical Realism
Born in 1963, painter and woodcutter Fang Lijun was featured at the groundbreaking exhibition "China Avant-Garde" in Beijing in 1989. He later developed his trademark style with his bald men against the backdrop of the sea or the sky. His imagery became the epitome of a new awakening in Chinese art. His works show people looking bored and angry at the same time - a reflection on Chinese society.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/O. Krato
Feng Mengbo: "The Great Chairman"
"The Great Chairman" shakes hands with his doppelganger in this work by Feng Mengbo. Feng was born in Beijing in 1966, when the Cultural Revolution started. Even as a student, the video and installation artist used his imagery to deal in a subversive manner with China's revolutionary idol. Feng has continued to recycle images from the Mao era in his videos and animations.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Estella Collection
Zeng Fanzhi: "The Last Supper" (2001)
Zeng Fanzhis' painting "The Last Supper" measures four meters in width and has fetched a record sum of $23.3 million at an auction for Asian art in Hong Kong in 2013. In Zeng's work, which is modeled after Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, Jesus' disciples have all been replaced with pioneers wearing red scarves. Only "Judas" is seen wear a western tie - a reference to China's turn to capitalism.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I. Langsdon
Cao Fei: "Live in RMB City" (2009)
Cao Fei is one of China's most recognized media artists, who is always represented in important international exhibitions on Chinese art. Her works often present a subjective mixture of fiction and documentation. This is how she addresses the fast pace of urban life in China, while also highlighting the impact of the latest technologies on people as well as their social consequences.
Image: Kunstsammlung NRW
Huang Yongping: "Leviathanation" (2011)
Huang Yongping (born 1954), is one of the earliest artists of the Chinese avant-garde. In 1986, he co-founded the group "Xiamen Dada", whose members were known for publicly burning their paintings after exhibitions. In 1989, he was one of the first Chinese artists to take part in an art show in France at the Centre Pompidou. After June 4, 1989, he stayed in Paris, where he still lives to this day.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Bradshaw
"Nut Brother" in Beijing (2015)
Wang Renzheng a.k.a. "Nut Brother" spent 100 days in Beijing in 2015 to collect the smog-related dust particles from the air using an industrial vacuum cleaner. The artist from Shenzhen later mixed the particles with clay and baked this mixtures in a factory to form bricks. Air pollution at your fingertips - that is his commentary on the relationship between man and nature.
Image: Nut Brother
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It was this pushback that eventually forced Zhu to give up organizing festivals in China and move to the United States.
"Over the past decade, I've seen both politically and commercially themed independent films in China being suppressed… Independent film in China is nearly extinct," he told DW.
Chinese independent festivals try to fly under the radar
The Wuhan film festival, which was also abruptly canceled this year, was run by a local, non-official independent screening group and had reached its fourth edition.
Two young Chinese film organizers, speaking to DW under pseudonyms for safety reasons, pointed to the unpredictability of government oversight as a key reason for the sudden shutdown.
Y, a former volunteer with a grassroots screening group, said independent festivals in China often survive only because local authorities "turn a blind eye" to them.
"Why this edition was shut down but the previous one wasn't… you tend to look for reasons in yourself," one said.
C, another Chinese film curator, also told DW that the strength of state enforcement fluctuates when it comes to independent film screenings, with some recent events facing little interference.
Despite the recent setbacks to his New York event, Zhu remains relatively optimistic. He told DW that Beijing's latest crackdown has actually garnered support for the festival.
"To some extent, we've gained a degree of space… Many people want to know what happened behind all this, which forces the authorities to acknowledge it rather than act with complete impunity," he said.
Edited by: Darko Janjevic
Authors of this article include Yuchen Li and Yu-Chun Chou
