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The Projector | Chinese film censors cancel two domestic movies, giving Hong Kong releases a boost
- The Eight Hundred and Better Days are withdrawn over controversial KMT and youth violence content; The Last Wish is renamed
- White Storm 2 and The Invincible Dragon fill the gaps in mainland cineplex schedules
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Two gritty domestic films were expected to dominate cineplexes across China this summer:The Eight Hundred and Better Days.
But not any more.
The Eight Hundred, Guan Hu’s military epic that depicts a five-day battle between Chinese and Japanese soldiers in Shanghai during World War II, was withdrawn from last month’s Shanghai International Film Festival and its commercial release, scheduled for July 5, has been cancelled.
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Why? Because a state-backed organisation called the Chinese Red Culture Research Association had criticised the film for playing up the real-life heroics of the Kuomintang-led army in the 1930s.
Hong Kong actor-director Derek Tsang Kwok-cheung’s Better Days, a rite-of-passage melodrama starring Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee, has been pulled, too, just months after being withdrawn from what would have been a high-profile premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival. The Hong Kong-mainland co-production had been scheduled for release at the end of last month.
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Reports cite Chinese censors’ disapproval of scenes featuring violence and delinquency among its young characters as the reason for the cancellations.
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