Print

Mail

wiki links

Cinema guards against Chinese spies

Tight security was clamped on a Toronto cinema on Tuesday to thwart any Chinese agents bent on identifying Tibetans featured in a new documentary detailing life under communist occupation.

Organizers of the "hot docs" documentary festival said they had introduced extra measures, including a ban on cameras, recording equipment and in-theater searches for infra-red filming equipment for "exclusively political reasons."

Producers of the film What Remains of Us were concerned Chinese government agents would infiltrate the audience at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto, hoping to gather data to carry out reprisals against featured Tibetans.

"Our concern is getting through the festival without anybody capturing some of the images of the faces of the people in the film," said Chris McDonald, executive director of the "hot-docs" festival.

"We are doing it as a precaution, mostly at the request of the filmmakers," he said.

The movie's premiere has been timed to coincide with the visit to Toronto of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who fled the region in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

What Remains of Us, directed by Francois Prevost and Hugo Latulippe, is billed as "guerrilla filmmaking" and as a "deeply moving" portrait of the lives of Tibetans under Chinese occupation.

Footage was collected between 1996 and this year with digital cameras smuggled into Tibet to show people gathered in remote monasteries, herders tents and private houses to see their first message from the Dalai Lama since 1950.

"After meeting His Holiness, we had this idea to bring this message that we filmed with him, to bring it inside Tibet and then get the response, the voice from inside," Prevost told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

What Remains of Us will also be shown during this year's Cannes Film Festival.

The Dalai Lama is spending more than 10 days in Toronto conducting Kalachakra Buddhist ceremonies and preaching non-violence, after earlier stopovers in Vancouver and Toronto.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin last week defied China's warnings in becoming the first man in his position to meet the Dalai Lama, despite fears that Canada's trade with the communist giant could be put at risk.
This story has been viewed 2203 times.