The director of a documentary about Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement said that he deleted a scene featuring a local artist playing China’s national anthem after a law was passed criminalizing “insults” to the revolutionary song.
Evans Chan (陳耀成), a Hong Kong-born, US-based producer who is behind the film We Have Boots, said he removed a segment after distributors told him that they might face legal problems following the passing of the national anthem law this month.
“The legal advice obtained by the distributors says we’d better make the cut,” Chan told reporters, adding that the edit would be made to the Hong Kong edition of the film, which first screened at the Rotterdam film festival earlier this year.
The scene featured footage of visual artist Kacey Wong (黃國才) playing China’s March of the Volunteers on an accordion as he sat inside a red metal cage for a piece of performance art titled Patriot.
Under a deal signed ahead of the 1997 handover by Britain, China agreed to a “one country, two systems” deal allowing Hong Kong to keep certain liberties and autonomy for 50 years.
The new law forbids insulting or changing China’s national anthem with up to three years in jail and a fine for those found guilty.
China is also pushing ahead with separate national security legislation for the territory, which it says would restore stability after violent pro-democracy protests last year and would only target “an extreme minority.”
Chan said he remained unsure whether a film like his — which features many of the territory’s most famous pro-democracy advocates — would even be screenable in Hong Kong once the national security legislation passes.
“If the law is soon passed, whether the film administration will give a green light and whether the distributors will take the risk, those are tricky questions,” he said, referring to the territory’s film classification board.
Wong said that he understood the need to edit out his performance, but said his work meant no insult to China’s national anthem.
“It’s dedicated to the real patriots of China who chose to speak up and bear the consequences of suppression, even when they fully understand the risks,” he told reporters, referring to jailed human rights lawyers and rights advocates in China.
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