The director kept his eyes on the audience, ignoring the cops in the back of the room.
It was a private screening of a romance film by Kiwi Chow. Several dozen friends had gathered in the office of a local district councillor to watch the movie and hear Chow speak. He was a politically sensitive figure who’d made films about Hong Kong’s protests and China’s crackdown on the city’s liberties.
His new work was an apolitical tale about a schizophrenic man who falls in love with a psychological counsellor. Hardly a storyline that would provoke dissent or violate a national security law. But the audience took note when two dozen police officers arrived. Chow, undeterred, went on with his talk.
By midnight, police had shut down the screening, fining each attendee HK$5,000 for violating social distancing rules. If the screening had featured Chow’s protest documentary, they could have been fined HK$1 million and imprisoned for up to three years, according to a law proposed by the Hong Kong government in August.
Police raids on movie screenings — unimaginable in Hong Kong a few years ago — are the latest reality in Beijing’s relentless suppression of the territory’s civil liberties. For filmmakers like Chow, 42, they are a sign of how China’s grip on Hong Kong is not only about asserting political control but also suffocating the cultural spaces where art can reflect truth and build solidarity in a society…
Read the full LA Times article here https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-09-16/china-hong-kong-movies-censorship
