Beijing puts sanctions on filmmaker
Chinese director Lou Ye has been banned from making movies in his home country for five years because his film was screened at Cannes in May without government approval, state media said.
The main Xinhua News Agency said that Lou’s movie, “Summer Palace,” would be confiscated and income from it seized. The film is a sexually explicit love story set against China’s pro-democracy protests of 1989, which led up to the brutal Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Producer Nai An was also banned from making films in China for five years, Xinhua said.
Lou attended the premiere of the film at the Cannes Film Festival in southern France in May without first obtaining permission from China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.
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