Legal skirmishes have created a minor media flap.
In the most publicized case, the director of A Dream of Youth, a Stockholm Film Festival winner about a love triangle, has a 100,000-yuan (US$12,100) defamation claim pending against Beijing Spring and Autumn, at the forefront of the repackaging practice.
Ironically, A Dream of Youth cleared the film bureau. But the DVD plugged it as having been banned for three years.
A spokesman for the State Press and Publications Administration said audiovisual regulators knew of the sexed-up releases and had demanded they be reprinted with cleaner covers.
Big Goose Rice Shop, the tale of a family ruined by greed and lust before the Communist Revolution, was to have reached theaters last year after being banned nine years ago.
But authorities abruptly pulled the plug again after only a few screenings, provoked by posters flashing a wild roll in the rice between lovers. Illegal video copies proliferated instead.
Maiden Work's makers never bothered tempting the censors for cinema release.
Shot in three weeks for US$100,000, it languished in obscurity after screenings from Vancouver to Rotterdam five years ago. Then last year, Li got a call from Spring and Autumn, which offered around 10,000 yuan for rights to distribute the film.
Figuring he had nothing to lose, Li said, he accepted.
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