China’s Communist managed Censorship Board has mandated that the media in China are not to cover any aspect of Zhangke Jia’s award winning film A TOUCH OF SIN, which was scheduled for theatrical release in China this month. The film screened at Cannes and Toronto and has made its way to screens all around the world – but the powers that be in his home country refuse to accept it. A Touch of Sin makes a violent statement of the New China, according to TheStar.com.
“The events portrayed in A Touch of Sin will make people very uncomfortable” said Jia in an interview in Toronto, “but my hope is that Chinese society will be able to understand and accept these events.”
The Censor Board in China controls all facets of information dissemination in that nation, either direct through news media or via art and entertainment in an effort to quell all information concerning Democracy, Political Protest, Maoism, Falun Gong, Ethnic Independence, Corruption, Police Brutality, Anarchism, Disparity of Wealth and Food Safety are just a few of a long list of banned subject matter.
“In the last two or three years I’ve noticed this increase in the intensity and volume of violent events happening in contemporary China” said Jia, “and for people to be surviving within that violent milieu, as a director I want to depict this and the tragedy of it.”
According to an article from TheDissolve.com, Jia has ceased mentioning his November release publicly and is concentrating his news output on his foreign releases and awards. Today was the last day that the film could be seen at the IFC Center in New York, ending a run that began on October 4th.
