Film festival in New York cancelled after China puts pressure on directors

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/07/indiechina-independent-film-festival-new-york-cancelled-china-pressure-directors

115 points · 7 comments · view on lemmy.world

7 Comments

Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org · 28 pts · 295d (1 reply)

If China is pressuring someone, that's a person whose works should be shown across America.

Hegar@fedia.io · 15 pts · 295d

Yeah that seems like it should be the case, right? This particular event does look like just an indie film fest that should've gone ahead to me.

But plenty of chinese dissidents are right wing lunatics. A lot are fundementalist christians or say, explicitly pro fascist meditation cults who fund trump and orban and claim to levitate, like the falun gong.

If you look at the damage the substantially far-right cuban expat community have done to politics in florida and pressuring towards bad policies and war nationally, id be more careful about which anti-china voices to empower.

NOT_RICK@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 295d (2 replies)

Well that sucks. It’s not even clear what was going to be shown that had the CCP so pissy

fluxion@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 295d (1 reply)

Winnie the Pooh: Electric Boogaloo 2

HeyJoe@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 294d

Can you lnk me the first one?

nymnympseudonym@piefed.social · 17 pts · 295d

Time is ripe for online festivals hosted on PeerTube and Jitsi instances.

Preferably with .onion available for people living under authoritarian regimes of various stripes.

SARGE@startrek.website · 9 pts · 294d
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bytesonbike@discuss.online · 3 pts · 294d

Zhu said the requests primarily came from directors based in China, who cited “personal reasons” for changing their mind about screening their films. Directors based outside China said their families back home had been contacted by the Chinese authorities, a common way of applying pressure to people beyond its borders.

Ah I see. So it's films made in China, being shown in NY for their film fest.

Similar to America and Banning Books, these films now have when more attention as films China doesn't want Americans to see!