Zhu Rikun had been planning the film festival for months, but it never happened.
As director of the first IndieChina Film Festival, Zhu was scheduled to invite filmmakers and filmmakers from China to New York for a small showcase of independent Chinese films this week, but he said concerns about persecution led to suspension of the event two days before it starts on November 8th.
Every day this week, Zhu showed up to protest at the empty space he had booked for the film festival.
“I wasn't preparing for a film festival,” the director told NBC News Friday morning.
IN statement Ahead of the film festival's cancellation, the organizer said it had received reports that filmmakers, directors and producers from China, as well as their relatives, would attend the event. faced persecution.
Zhu said many of the participants who pulled out of the independent film festival did not give a reason or cite “personal reasons,” but some said they or their family members were ordered to do so by Chinese authorities.
“I hope that this announcement of the cancellation of the IndieChina Film Festival will cause certain unknown forces to stop harassing all directors, guests, former employees, volunteers, and my friends and family,” Zhu said this in a statement on the festival's website..
By the time Zhu suspended the film festival, it was too late for him to cancel his reservation. He spent the week going to events—sometimes alone or with several other directors—to watch a few films and discuss them.
“I'm still a filmmaker. I'm still a Chinese filmmaker and I'm still an independent film curator,” Zhu said, adding that independent filmmaking in China is “really difficult; it's very different from what it used to be.”
Before moving to New York a decade ago, Zhu worked at independent film festivals in China for nearly 20 years and co-founded the Beijing Independent Film Festival.
But independent film festivals have begun in China faced with increasing repression after Chinese President Xi Jinping, known for his strict ideological control, came to power in 2012, according to Human Rights Watch. A non-governmental organization that investigates human rights abuses around the world said Chinese authorities have closed all three of China's largest independent film festivals, including the Beijing Zhu Independent Film Festival.
“In the end, all my film festivals were banned, none of them could continue,” Zhu said.
After what happened to his Beijing Film Festival, Zhu began rethinking how to hold a film festival dedicated to Chinese independent films that could escape censorship—the New York event was the first attempt to do so.
“The Chinese government has appealed worldwide to shut down the New York Film Festival,” Yalkun UluyolThis is stated in a statement by a Chinese researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s desire to control what the world sees and learns about China.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to an email from NBC News seeking comment.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China told The New York Times He said this week that he was not familiar with the specific circumstances of the Indie China Film Festival and that Human Rights Watch “has long been biased against China.”
