When censorship is on the line, answer the call
Originally published by Sydney Morning Herald, 15 July 2010
By Richard Moore
I VERY rarely pick up the general phone in the office: I’m usually protected by a phalanx of staff. I think Angie, our receptionist, must have slipped downstairs for a quick ciggie. Whatever the reason, the call I took 12 months ago was to change the life of the Melbourne International Film Festival forever. I could sometimes be accused of a touch of melodrama but it’s fair to say that the reverberations of that phone call from the local Chinese consulate demanding the withdrawal from our program of Australian-made documentary The 10 Conditions of Love would be felt in the boardrooms of arts festivals the world over.
My old theatre director used to ask every actor one question: what’s the most important thing in theatre? ”Timing,” he’d say, before the poor sucker had a chance to blink.
The older one gets, the more one realises how critical timing can be. When we decided to program 10 Conditions of Love, we had no way of knowing that the death of Chinese nationals in Xinjiang province in July would catapult Rebiya Kadeer on to the list of China’s most hated. Kadeer had visited Australia the previous year – to almost no media attention.
MIFF’s refusal to comply with the demand plunged us into a Dan Brown-ish drama of intrigue and produced an extraordinary response aimed at our organisation – the withdrawal of seven films, assaults on our website, and waves of abusive emails and faxes – the image of a kangaroo lying squashed on the highway remains the most potent of these.
How naive of the Chinese to think that we would bend. How naive were we to think that we could get away with acting independently with impunity?
This almost overshadowed the other attempt to censor our program by English filmmaker Ken Loach. Although not as destructive as the campaign against 10 Conditions of Love, I believe Loach’s attempt to censor us was equally insidious and politically driven. Ken Loach demanded that we refuse an offer of cultural sponsorship from the state of Israel.
I had to pinch myself hard to remind myself that this was the same Ken Loach whose films MIFF had supported over the years. Plainly for Loach, it’s a free world when it comes to the question of using the festival for commercial gain but not when it comes to allowing the festival to determine its own sources of funding.
As the festival collects this year’s Voltaire award for its “distinguished contribution to free speech”, my feelings about it almost one year later are mixed. This year’s program does not include the new Ken Loach film – Route Irish. Neither does it have Beneath the Sun, a documentary about the Dalai Lama and the pro-Tibet movement. I admit to a certain degree of nervousness placing that film in the DVD machine – as it turned out, the production had very little to recommend it.
On the one hand, MIFF won round one. By sticking to our guns, MIFF enhanced its reputation and gained enormous publicity for its stance. On the other hand, there is an argument to put that we also lost the war. Those seven films that we had programmed were never seen by our audiences.
At least we can get one back. This year’s program includes Petition, one of the films that had to be withdrawn last year. Shot undercover over 12 years by director Zhao Liang, it tracks locals petitioning Beijing’s complaints office. The treatment they receive at the fists of local thugs is appalling. While I don’t imagine our comrades at the Chinese consulate will be pleased to see it in the program, I doubt they will be instructed to call our offices this year.
10 Conditions of Love – the doco that would have played to 180 people on Sunday afternoon – became a cause celebre, was seen by more than 2500 people and raised the profile of the Uighur cause worldwide. In the past 12 months, as the documentary moved around the world, the protests got quieter, until its screening on the ABC went ahead with barely a whimper.
But as MIFF accepts the Voltaire award, we reflect on what a luxury it is to celebrate an award for speaking with an independent voice. While there are signs that some of the stringent controls exerted over the Uighur people are being relaxed, it will be a long time before the Chinese Communist Party allows the Uighurs to mount an independent film festival in the ancient city of Kashgar.
Richard Moore is the director of the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival.