Chinese director hopes to be 'last ever banned'

Friday, May 15, 2009

AFP - Friday, May 15CANNES, France (AFP) - - Outlawed Chinese film director Lou Ye, whose torrid underground movie is competing for the top prize at Cannes, on Thursday urged Beijing to let film-makers work without restriction.
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"I hope to be the last Chinese director ever to be banned, that no one else suffer this," he said in an interview ahead of his movie's red-carpet premiere on the second day of the world's top film festival.
"My films cannot be viewed in China," he told AFP. "My producers are trying to have the ban lifted because it is senseless."
Lou's sultry "Spring Fever," shot in secret over two months in Nanjing city, is one of 20 movies in the running for the Palme d'Or to be handed out on May 24.
He used a hand-held camera to film actors whose characters become involved in a love triangle that involves a lot of graphic gay sex.
"We and the cast never talked about the ban," he said. "I did not want it to influence the making of the film. I don't accept the ban. I'm not rebelling against it but I'm continuing to do my job, and my job is to make films."
Censors slapped a five-year ban on the 44-year-old director in 2006 after he brought his previous movie "Summer Palace" -- another steamy love tale set around the taboo subject of the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen protests -- to Cannes in 2006 without official approval.
China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television had refused approval on the grounds the quality of the copy was not up to standard and had technical problems.
But the film was sensitive for China's censors on two fronts -- the issue of the 1989 protests as well as a large number of sex scenes.
"Spring Fever" could prove his most controversial film yet since it deals with a subject -- homosexuality -- still taboo in the country.
"We were psychologically prepared to be stopped during the filming, but that never happened, and today here we are with the film and the cast, which after all is a good thing," said Lou.
China had loosened up on homosexuality, he said, granting greater freedom to gays. But public opinion remained opposed.
"In China you must marry to have children and perpetuate the family and tradition," he said.
But love, not just gay love, was the essence of "Spring Fever," he added.
"Love can happen anywhere, anytime, and here it happens between two men."
The point of the movie, which kicks off with an affair between two men and an angry cheated wife, is to portray individual emotions rather than social problems, he said.
"The individual is more important than the group, but the last time the Chinese talked about individuals was back in the 1920s," he said, explaining why the movie referred to a 1923 tale by Yu Dafu.
Would the film be seen in China?
"I don't know how," he said.