[Censorship is rife] Student short film "Darkroom Night Sky", Comrade Yu in the Darkroom, won the first Golden Horse Award due to a single scene, canceled the release

Written by: Jeffrey
Text Editor: Cindy
Website Editor: Mo

The work "Darkroom Night Sky" by college students won the Golden Horse Award for "Best Animated Short Film" five years ago. It depicts the daily life and inner world of young gay men. The darkroom with closed doors and windows symbolizes the mental and physical depression of gay men. It not only deeply presents Hong Kong The struggle and hope of the socially neutral minority is also the first Hong Kong short film to win the Golden Horse Award in many years. However, this excellent work, which has made a name for itself overseas, has recently been censored by the Electricity Inspection Office for citing "national security" because of a one-second-long social movement scene, requiring the relevant scene to be cut before it can be shown publicly. The creative team was unwilling to cooperate with the government's censorship, and had to cancel the screening session originally scheduled for the "Flatland Video Learning Project" in mid-August; the full video originally uploaded to YouTube by the university it belongs to has now become a "private video" and cannot be viewed. Only a 40-second trailer remains on the platform.

The Electricity Inspection Office now points out that the social movement pictures involve national security, but they have been successfully released many times in the past five years

"Darkroom Night Sky" is adapted from a true gay story. It is the creation of a short film released by the Open University of Hong Kong (now known as the Hong Kong Metropolitan University) in 2017 by Shi Jiajun, Huang Junlang and Huang Ziying. The University's "Creative Arts Graduation Exhibition" and the Hong Kong "Asia Pacific Gay Film Festival" in September of the same year were broadcast, and the materials and creative methods were widely praised. In the following two years, they were also screened at the local events of the non-governmental organization "Pingdi Yingshe". However, this year, "Pingdi Cinema" arranged to re-broadcast "Darkness" in the first "Pingdi Video Learning Project" on August 14, and when applying for a release permit from the Film, Newspaper and Articles Management Office (Electronic Inspection Office) as usual, However, the Censorship Office cited the newly revised national security review guidelines of the "Regulations on Film Censorship", and required the deletion of only one or two seconds of scenes in "Darkness" alluding to the Umbrella Movement in 2014, otherwise the application for public screening would not be approved. The production team was reluctant to delete the film upon request, and had no choice but to cancel the original screening arrangement.

The screen that was asked to be deleted had the slogan "Don't forget the original intention", tents and fences were scattered throughout the screen, and there were also vertical yellow umbrellas, reminiscent of the "I want true universal suffrage" slogan that often appeared in the 2014 Umbrella Movement. . The Censorship Office stated that the scene "reproduces the situation of the illegal occupation", and "Pingdi Yingsha" stated on its social media page that the Censorship Office "doesn't allow the work to be released in a full version", while the director and the organizer "are both". The censored version will not be shown.” Therefore, the screening was canceled, citing the dialogue in the film “Darkness”: “My home is really similar to Hong Kong, it is small and has no space, and there are many things that cannot be changed. Who would want to close their eyes and see marshmallows on the sheep and flying felt on the weeds on this grass, which is too small for a sound?"

According to the "Independent Media" report , the Censorship Office stated that "if the team does not delete the specified clips, it will not be able to obtain a 2A film rating, nor will it be issued an approval certificate, and it will not be able to perform any public screenings", while citing the "Film Censorship Ordinance" The content of Article 10, said that the considerations include "whether the release of the film will be detrimental to national security." Regarding being asked to cut the short film, the production team said that it would not accept interviews for the time being, but the commissioned organizer conveyed: "Our feeling is that it is really only a second or two of images." After the short film was awarded the award in 2017, the Hong Kong Metropolitan University Animation and The VFX YouTube channel has also been fully uploaded, but it has now become a private video and cannot be viewed, with only a 40-second trailer left on the platform. However, Vimeo, another film and television platform, still has the complete short film uploaded by Shi Jiajun himself, and the public can watch the whole film after logging in to the platform for free.

The creator of the short video is based on the real story of gay social workers: I deeply feel the pain of gays concealing their family members

"Darkroom Night Sky" is only 7 and a half minutes long, but the content is very delicate and rich. The creative team said that they have many gay friends around them, so they hoped to make a short video to express their gay aspirations, and the story was inspired by Yin Haowei, a member of the tertiary LGBT concern group that the three met online. Actors, who are also registered social workers, often focus on sex workers through outreach efforts. The short film focuses on depicting the powerlessness and estrangement of "Wei Wei" when he gets along with his family. For example, in the eyes of the protagonist, his father is a traditional big man who is not good at expressing his feelings. Knowing that I can't," he returned to his small and dark room and struck a match to light a cigarette.

Looking back on the interview that year , Huang Junlang said that "Darkroom Night Sky" was inspired by the animation "The Magic Mountain" about the Polish anti-communist artist Adam Jacek Winkler. He hoped that the audience would abandon the label and re-understand the minority and non-mainstream group. In order to make the short film, the three interviewed 10 gay friends, and the deepest feeling was the pain they had to disguise themselves at home. Huang Ziying said, "It's obvious that she looks gay, but when facing her family, she has to firmly say no." She said that after winning the award, a good friend said that she wanted to come out after watching the short film, which made her realize that she had made a mistake. It's a feeling and honor to bump into someone's life. Huang Junlang agreed, saying: "Even if they win a lot of movements in society, or there are more gay marchers this year, it may not be able to solve the situation of their families themselves."

More than 10 movies have not been released since the new law of the Electric Inspection Office cooperated with the censorship of the "National Security Law"

According to Hong Kong's "Film Censorship Ordinance", if an individual or group wants to broadcast a film and television work in the local public, it must submit the screening activity information and a copy of the film to the CIQ in advance for the prescription examiner to examine and issue an "approval certificate" (such as The film must be graded) or an "exemption certificate" (if the film is exempted from grading) before it can be legally released in Hong Kong. Violators can be fined up to HK$1 million or even face three years in prison. According to the new rules revised in 2021, inspectors are even more required to "carefully pay attention to crimes that may constitute crimes endangering national security in videos" and have "the responsibility to prevent and stop acts endangering national security", and are also required to pay attention to reports in videos such as documentaries Or reenact real events closely related to Hong Kong, review whether the content is biased, unverified, false or misleading to the audience, and also pay attention to whether the content will make the audience imitate the criminal or violent behavior in it.

According to media statistics , since the "Hong Kong National Security Law" came into effect in 2020, at least 10 films have been banned or cancelled because they were not cut as required, including "Ten Years", "Revolution of the Times", "Revolution of the Times", Teenagers", "Occupy the Legislative Council" and "The Siege of PolyU", as well as the Taiwanese short film "Beautiful Pork Balls", which captured the scenes of Taiwan's presidential election. Some film and television works were forced to temporarily cancel the screening due to the delay in obtaining the "Certificate of Approval" from the Electric Power Inspection Office before their release, such as the animated short "The Cage" about totalitarian rule, freedom and resistance, and the film about the history of Taiwan's white terror. "Red Island" etc. In 2021, Hong Kong's "Eurasian Rainbow Week" was originally scheduled to broadcast the documentary "The Same Love Family" on Taiwan's gay marriage process , but the Censorship Office did not allow the full version to be released.

Further reading:
Originally scheduled for 16 sex/different minority protest documentaries, Taiwan owes only to Taiwan's "One Family"

[Chinese film and television censorship] AIDS has been silenced and homosexuality has disappeared in foreign film dramas that have been censored in recent years