An independent short film has been withdrawn from a Hong Kong film festival after it failed to gain approval from censors.
Independent short film group and film festival organiser Phone Made Good Film released a statement last Friday announcing the cancellation of the screening of its nine-minute film Wake In Silence. The short was going to be featured in the Loose Narratives festival.
The group stated that the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration (OFNAA) had refused to issue a permit for the scheduled screening, allegedly because the film showed a flag containing “potentially seditious intent.” Wake In Silence contained a scene in which a flag with the words “100% freedom” could be seen.
The scene was then modified by the film crew, who replaced the flag in post-production with a government national security poster. However, they later withdrew their screening application after being asked to seek permission from the government for using the poster.
David Chan, one of the founders of the short film group, told HKFP that OFNAA explicitly said the flag was the reason their screening application was rejected.
He said the group had submitted 11 short films to the censorship authorities in January, of which two were denied screening permission. The festival organiser then submitted two more short films, including Wake In Silence, to OFNAA. The application to screen Wake In Silence was rejected days before the one-day film festival last Saturday.
“We expected reaction like this from the authority, so we’re not surprised,” Chan said.
OFNAA said in an email reply to HKFP that it would not comment on the application or censorship decision of individual films.
Chan said instead of removing the scene or blackening the flag, the group thought replacing it with a national security poster was a satirical act that “expressed their attitude” on the matter.
The poster, which reads “Uphold National Security, Safeguard Our Home,” was designed by the government for the National Security Education Day in 2022.
However, after OFNAA told them to seek the government’s approval for including the official poster in their work, they decided to withdraw the application as the permit was not likely to be issued in time for the festival, Chan said.
Available on Youtube
The short film, which is available to watch on YouTube, was about a Hong Kong girl whose boyfriend has left the city. The “100% freedom” flag – which was designed and sold by defunct pro-democracy party Demosisto during a 2019 Lunar New Year fair – is seen in the female lead’s bedroom.
The film has garnered almost 3,000 views on YouTube as of Monday.
Chan said the videos featured in the festival were uploaded to YouTube with the sole intention of attracting a wider audience. They had no plans to take the video down from the platform, he added.
Two other films originally scheduled to be featured at the short film festival, To The Other Side and It Happened One Night, were denied screening permits by the film authority, citing the glorification of cannabis usage and “seditious” criticism about Hong Kong returning to Chinese sovereignty.
At the film festival on Saturday, Rex Ren, one of the founders of Phone Made Good Film, read out a rejection letter from OFNAA on stage. Laughter could be heard from the audience as Ren read, according to a video published by local media ReNews.
Chan said the letters were not confidential, explaining that they believed ensuring transparency and openness was the best way to handle the matter. The public could decide whether the arguments put forward by the both parties were reasonable, he said.
Ren and Chan, were respectively the director and scriptwriter of the film May You Stay Forever Young, a protest film nominated for best new director and best editing at Taiwan’s Golden Horse awards, which also failed to get screening approval from the film censorship authorities.
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