New Links - 4/24/06

[dleedlee]

Wong Kar-wai heads Cannes festival jury
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- ... 465446.htm
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/349/2006/04/24/60@80652.htm

Will Liu and Jay Chow promote new album
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/349/2006/04/24/60@80887.htm

China's 28th Hundred Flowers Awards Nominee List
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/349/2006/04/24/44@80727.htm

Two of Zhang Yimou's Films Get Nominated for Hundred-Flower Awards
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/349/2006/04/24/44@80736.htm

Twins Starring in Co-Production Film of EMG &Sundream Motion Pictures
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/349/2006/04/24/60@80801.htm

Wang Chao to Tells His Story at Cannes (Luxury Car)
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/349/2006/04/24/60@80668.htm

New Posters for "The Banquet"
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/349/2006/04/24/44@80903.htm


The diary of a young girl, a film and a festival fight
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... rtainment/
(The subbed DVD was recently pulled from availability by yesasia last week)

Photos:
Shu Qi poses for Vogue
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- ... 465810.htm

Jolin practises dancing crazily for new album
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- ... 467154.htm

Stefanie Sun stages solo concert in Shanghai
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- ... 467367.htm

The diary of a young girl, a film and a festival fight
GUY DIXON

With a report from Jan Wong

The story of a young, impoverished Chinese girl struggling to get an education has now turned into a struggle between a French journalist and the international film festival circuit, including the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children.

Pierre Haski, a former Beijing bureau chief for the Paris newspaper Libération and now its deputy editor, is trying to stop the 2005 Chinese film The Story of Xiao-yan from being shown outside of China. It has already had one public screening at the Sprockets festival this weekend and will be shown again next Saturday and Sunday.

The film is about a 13-year-old girl in the remote province of Ningxia who is forced to stop attending school because her family can only afford her brothers' tuition. The trouble is, Haski says, the story is taken directly from an internationally best-selling book he helped to edit called The Diary of Ma Yan.

Haski had originally drawn publishers' attention to Ma's diary through an article he wrote for his newspaper. The diary was then published in France in 2002 and has come out in 19 countries, including China and in North America. As a result of its popularity, Ma has received considerable media attention in China and around the world.

"It became a real phenomenon [in China] to the point where her name came to symbolize the fate of those kids who cannot go to school," Haski said. The success of the book has helped Ma to continue her education and led to the creation of a Paris-based foundation, Enfants du Ningxia, which helps other children in Ma's district attend school.

Haski believes he's powerless to prevent the film from being shown inside China, largely because the film was made with Chinese government assistance. But any time he discovers that a film festival outside China is planning to show the film, he has tried to contact the festival to explain his position. In November, he managed to stop the film from being shown at the inaugural London Children's Film Festival.

A statement from the filmmakers' legal adviser, sent via e-mail from the film's sales agent in Beijing, argues that although Ma Yan was interviewed by the screenwriter, the two stories are different.

"The moving story Road to School [the Chinese name for the film] lets you have some hope for this central character, while Ma Yan's diary leaves the impression of bitter hardship. So the film and the diary each express completely different central themes. The Road to School doesn't depict the specific person of Ma Yan. It shows the general phenomenon facing Chinese schoolchildren in the northwest of China and gives you hope through the example of one kid," the statement says. (In the film, the girl's name is Wang Yan, and "Xiao-yan" in the English title means "little Yan.")

When Haski originally heard about the film by chance, he and a French lawyer based in Beijing (who specializes in copyright cases, such as the myriad Lacoste knock-offs made in China) contacted the producers prior to the Berlin film festival in 2004. But "when I asked to see the movie, I was so cross. They made it into a propaganda film," Haski said.

According to Haski, the producers have not agreed to his demand that the film's credits mention that it is least an adaptation -- although not an authorized one -- and to give a share of the profits to the schools in the area. (He doesn't insist that the filmmakers give proceeds to Enfants du Ningxia. They can give directly to the schools. Haski added that he is giving a quarter of royalties from the best-selling diary to the charity.) But because no agreement was signed, Haski sent a letter from his lawyer in China to the filmmakers insisting that they don't have permission to show the film outside of China.

"Since then, we have been at war with them. It has been a kind of hide-and-seek game," Haski said. The film has managed to get into various international festivals, including ones in Italy, Germany and Iran.

Now it is showing at Sprockets, the highly regarded children's version of the much larger Toronto International Film Festival. Sprockets has taken the position that the dispute is between the author and the filmmakers, and that there is no legally binding agreement preventing the festival from screening the film. Also, because the festival and its organization are non-profit, there is no profit incentive in their decision to show it, said TIFF spokesman Denny Alexander.

Yet Haski disagrees with this. "I told them that both from a legal and moral ground, they were totally wrong, and [that it's] very upsetting that a Canadian festival would take so little care of intellectual property rights -- which is a main issue in dealing with China, as you probably know."