Banned Chinese director brings film to Toronto festival
Last Updated: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 | 3:46 PM ET
CBC Arts
Toronto film festival audiences get their first chance on Wednesday to see the sexually and politically charged Chinese film Summer Palace — the movie that netted director Lou Ye a five-year ban from filmmaking.
The film is set to make its North American premiere at the annual Toronto event, with a second screening scheduled for Friday.
In May, Lou defied Chinese officials when he submitted Summer Palace for competition at the Cannes Film Festival before the film had been cleared by the country's censors.
Director Lou Ye, seen here in Cannes prior to the screening of Summer Palace, has said he will defy the Chinese government's five-year filmmaking ban against him.
(Francois Mori/Associated Press)
At the prestigious French event, the film — the only Chinese entry in competition for the Palme d'Or this year — met with an enthusiastic reception.
Summer Palace tells the story of a Beijing University student engaged in a doomed love affair with a fellow student during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the massacre at Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
Some have described the film as a bold depiction of sexual liberation, political upheaval and youthful longings.
Lou, producer banned
Though silent while Lou and his film were at Cannes, China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television finally spoke out in early September, when it imposed a five-year filmmaking ban on the acclaimed filmmaker for showing the work.
Nai An, one of his producers on the film, was given the same punishment.
However, Lou has said in several interviews since that he will defy the ban and carry on his film work, including continuing preparations already begun on his next movie.
"The ban is unreasonable. This is my personal right. As the film regulator for a region, you can ban my film from being shown in that area, but you don't have the right to stop a certain director from working," he said last week from Hong Kong.
Though China has banned Summer Palace, distribution rights have already been sold in more than 20 countries.
It is the second time China has placed a ban on Lou: he was previously barred from filmmaking for two years for producing his 2000 thriller Suzhou River without official approval.
The Shanghai-born Lou studied film and painting at the Beijing Film Academy in the late 1980s. His credits include the television series Super City, several short films and the feature-length works Weekend Lover, Suzhou River, Purple Butterfly and Summer Palace.
