Chinese authorities have banned the artist and film director Guo Zhen Ming to travel to Singapore for the world premiere of his documentary”Tedious days and nights.”
The film is scheduled to screen at the Singapore International Film Festival on December 4 in the Standpoint area of the festival. It was announced to include a question and answer session with the director.
SGIFF organizers said Variety that they still plan to go ahead with the screening, but they will do so in the absence of the filmmaker. “SGIFF will support our selection and continue to present the world premiere of ‘Tedious Days and Nights,'” a spokesperson said. Variety.
Guo, who had previously been detained for 15 days in December last year, had his passport destroyed by authorities in Yunnan province in May. His recent application for a new passport has been rejected due to restrictions imposed on him in Lijiang, Yunnan, Guo told Radio Free Asia.
A friend and fellow artist, Ji Feng, also told the broadcaster that Guizhou police imposed an official travel ban on Guo on September 27.
Guo’s film addresses the most deteriorating aspects of Chinese society, particularly how the country’s economic rise has left some people behind, a topic that has sometimes, but not always, caused problems for other mainland filmmakers. “Tedious” also addresses the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, one of the most taboo topics in China.
“Poet Zeng Dekuang returns to the former industrial city of Coal Dam after 30 years of wandering to find the place in disrepair, much like the promise of his youth has dimmed in middle age. Instead of resisting the decay of time, Zeng and his old friends give in to it with abandon and return to their most basic impulses, sometimes with comical failures, but mostly in a state of intoxication,” reads the SGIFF program. about the movie. “Poetry accentuates the tedium of aimlessness and melancholic memories. In ‘Tedious Days and Nights’, the Tiananmen Square massacre continues to haunt a lost generation of Chinese artists. As the men frolic in the ruins, this documentary depicts a passive resistance equivalent to the tang ping (‘lying down’ or dropping out of school) movement of today’s Chinese youth.”
On June 4, 1989, soldiers were used to quell a student-led rebellion in Tiananmen, central Beijing. While exact numbers are unclear, it is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were killed. Discussions about the events are largely suppressed on China’s public channels and censored on Chinese social media.
It is understood that “Tedious Days and Nights” does not have the so-called Dragon Seal, a mark of approval that appears in the pre-title credits of films that have received censorship approval from mainland Chinese authorities. Without the seal, it cannot be screened in Chinese cinemas nor can it be legally screened at foreign festivals.
The SGIFF festival catalog indicates that the film will screen with an R21 rating in Singapore, the country’s most restrictive rating category, limiting it to audiences 21 and older. The rating reflects the film’s “sexual scenes, coarse language and nudity,” the festival spokesperson said. Variety was unable to verify the rating on the Singapore online movie rating database.
But Guo’s other activities, rather than the film’s content, may be the cause of his problems.
Last year, Guo made public comments on the so-called white paper movement, in which members of the public voiced their grievances about the ruling Communist Party with blank sheets of paper, rather than specific grievances. He was arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a broadly defined offense often used against activists, lawyers and media workers.
Later, Guo also signed an online petition that was circulated in favor of women’s rights. The petition followed a case in Jiangsu province in which a woman was trafficked three times and bought by a family who kept her chained in a latrine. In April, six people received prison sentences of up to 13 years for abuse and wrongful imprisonment.
“I was going to attend the world premiere (of my film) at the… Singapore International Film Festival on December 4, so I was eager to apply for a passport so I could leave the country,” Guo told RFA. “But the Lijiang municipal police department refuses to accept my passport application, saying that I am suspected of being a threat to national political security. “I am prohibited from leaving the country.”
Guo studied literature at Hunan Normal University and completed his master’s degree in art history at the Department of Fine Arts at Yunpan University. “Tedious Days and Nights” is her first feature film.
