April 29, 1999
China Bans Filmmaker for Eluding Censorship
By SETH FAISON NYT
Found at
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/chen-film.html

SHANGHAI, China -- The Chinese authorities have banned actress Joan Chen from 
working in the country because she directed a film in a remote rural area that 
was shot without official permission.
The movie, "Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl," was filmed last year in western 
China, where Ms. Chen was able to evade close scrutiny from local officials. 
Although the movie's political content is relatively mild, Ms. Chen, who grew 
up in China and has built a substantial Hollywood career, irritated government 
officials by sidestepping their regulations, making a film that was later 
acclaimed in Taiwan and then speaking openly about it.

Reuters Joan Chen's "Xiu Xiu," shot in western China, opens in Manhattan on May 
7.
Image at
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/chen-film.1.jpg

 "She used abominable means to deceive the government," said Zhou Jiandong, a 
senior official of the country's Film Bureau. "She knows what she did was 
illegal, so she was deliberately violating regulations."
"Xiu Xiu" is a tale of youthful innocence lost to corrupt men whose currency is 
sex. Xiu Xiu (pronounced 'show show') is a teen-age girl who is sent to a 
mountainous backwater in the 1960s, when the fanatical politics of the Cultural 
Revolution forced millions of urban residents to relocate to the countryside 
with tragic results.
The film, Ms. Chen's first effort as a director, is scheduled to open in New 
York on May 7.
China's Film Bureau requires every filmmaker who wants to shoot a movie here to 
submit a script for approval, follow changes that are requested and screen the 
finished product to officials before the film can be shown publicly. No 
deviation from this path is ordinarily allowed, and if an unauthorized film 
attracts attention, it will probably incur government wrath.
As punishment, Zhou said, the Film Bureau issued an official document in March 
that banned Ms. Chen indefinitely from any film or television work in China and 
fined her $50,000. Such a black mark is also likely to discourage Chinese movie 
theaters and television stations from showing earlier films starring Ms. Chen. 
The actress is best known for her roles as the principal wife of Pu Yi, the 
last emperor of China, in the 1987 film "The Last Emperor"; Jocelyn Packard in 
David Lynch's early '90s television series "Twin Peaks," and a young Vietnamese 
peasant in Oliver Stone's 1993 film "Heaven and Earth."
Asked about that, Zhou said simply, "All imported films have to apply for a 
license."
Zhou denounced "Xiu Xiu" as a film that "traces the dark side of life, does not 
conform with history and has a negative effect on the socialist system and the 
reputation of the nation."
Ms. Chen, who immigrated to the United States in 1981 and lives in San 
Francisco, had planned to act in a film in Shanghai this spring, but withdrew 
from that project in March.
"There's a price," Ms. Chen said. "I don't regret it."
The film, based on the novel "Tian Yu" by Yan Gelin, a Chinese-born woman 
living in the United States, attracted only mild attention from officials at 
China's Film Bureau after it was first screened, at the Berlin Film Festival in 
February 1998. But the officials were irritated when "Xiu Xiu" won seven of 
Taiwan's Golden Horse awards in December.
Zhou, who took part in an investigation of Ms. Chen's case, said the 
authorities were particularly angered when Taiwan newspapers reported that she 
had evaded regulations and improperly used a license that had been granted for 
shooting another director's television drama.
Ms. Chen said she had apologized to the Film Bureau for evading the regulations 
but that she had been determined to shoot her film regardless of the penalty.
"I applied the normal way," said Ms. Chen, 38. "But they wanted me to make 
revisions to the script and I didn't want to. If they had revisions that would 
make it a better movie, fine. But I wasn't going to make revisions that made it 
worse."
Ms. Chen said officials had requested that sexual and pessimistic scenes be 
removed from the film, which would have seriously altered the result.
Many Chinese directors have made films underground. Yet distributing such a film within China is virtually impossible, so filmmakers who have shot without permission often negotiate a solution with the Film Bureau that in
volves a measure of groveling.
Ms. Chen chose to appeal to the international market with an uncensored version of her film even though that prevents her from releasing it in China. Yet movies are commonly pirated in China, and Ms. Chen's film has been 
widely available on China's video market since late last year.
During six weeks of shooting on location, Ms. Chen said, she smuggled film out of China almost every day because she feared that the authorities might confiscate all of it if they discovered what she was doing. That preve
nted her from watching playbacks, and often meant hurried filming that left her movie with a rough, seam-showing edge.
"A first-time director, without seeing the dailies, it was crazy," Ms. Chen said. "Every day that was a fear, that they would find us and take away the film."
Working with a crew of 60, Ms. Chen ventured into western Sichuan province, mostly populated by Tibetans, and acted as though she had full permission. Local officials, thrilled to play host to such a celebrity, did not ch
allenge her papers.
A local official accompanied the crew at all times, so Ms. Chen sometimes split the crew in two, sending half, with the official, to shoot something innocuous while the other half secretly shot a more sensitive scene unde
tected. Ms. Chen filmed additional scenes at a movie studio in Shanghai, working at night to avoid detection.
The film stars two previously unknown actors: 17-year-old Lu Lu as Xiu Xiu, and Lopsang, who uses only one name as many Tibetans do, as the Tibetan herder whom Xiu Xiu joins in his rural hut in the mountains.
Ms. Chen calls her film a love story, though it is clearly more. She said she chose to direct "Xiu Xiu" because it reflects the time she grew up, although she was not "sent down" to the country.
"From the time I was 9 or 10, it was what we all talked about, how to keep out of getting 'sent down,"' said Ms. Chen, the daughter of two doctors who was reared in Shanghai. "My parents talked about it all the time. We w
ere obsessed by it. I always heard stories, with horror but also with some 
fascination, about people who went to the countryside."
Ms. Chen's experience may highlight the sometimes arbitrary nature of China's 
system of censorship and control over filmmaking.
She said she regretted that the local officials where the movie was shot would 
probably be criticized by the government.
"I feel bad," she said. "I don't think anything serious will happen to them, 
but I wasn't straight with them." As for her crew members, mostly Chinese, she 
believes none were punished.
Zhou said that local officials had been punished, but he was not specific. 
Because they did not collude with Ms. Chen and did not know that she was 
filming without permission, it is unlikely that they received more than a 
perfunctory reprimand.

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