CHINA: Film director Lou Ye, arguably the most innovative and exciting of China's new breed of film-makers, has been banned from making films for five years after he submitted Summer Palace to the Cannes Film Festival without getting approval from the country's all-powerful censors.
The film is a romance set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that also features explicit sex scenes and it is the second time Lou has been banned - his last film, the critically acclaimed Suzhou River was also banned in 2000.
"Lou took Summer Palace, a Palme d'Or candidate, to France without permission for its general release from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT)," the Xinhua news agency reported.
The ban also applies to his producer Nai An.
"A senior official with SARFT confirmed the punishment to Xinhua, but refused to discuss the case further," Xinhua said.
Back in May, the SARFT censorship panel was annoyed about the quality of the 140-minute rough video cut of the movie that it was sent for censorship purposes, saying it was unclear and could not be heard properly.
Some took that to be a comment on Lou's trademark dreamy and obscure style.
China regularly stops the domestic distribution of films which have sensitive subject matter and even big names have had to deal with the censor's red pen.
Zhang Yimou, director of the box office hits Hero and House of Flying Daggers, is currently strongly favoured by the government and he has even been appointed director of ceremonies for the Olympics in 2008.
But for many years his early films were not shown in China as they were seen as politically awkward.
Directors and producers will often take the offending film to a foreign film festival instead and many have gone on to become big hits abroad, particularly on the arthouse cinema circuit.
Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle won the Silver Bear and Jury Grand Prix at the Berlin Film Festival in 2001 but was banned for two years at home, while the very popular director Jiang Wen's Devils on the Doorstep in 2000 was also banned.
And Lou's Suzhou River, which tells the tragic love story about a motorcycle courier and a smuggler's daughter, won the top prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2000, but was banned in China.
That two-year ban came when he sent Suzhou River to compete in overseas film festivals without official approval.
Summer Palace takes its name from the former imperial residence in Beijing and tells the story of two lovers, played by Hao Lei and Guo Xiaodong, who become separated after the brutal crackdown on Tiananmen Square in June 1989 and reunited years later.
It is set in five Chinese cities, including Beijing and Chongqing, and also features Berlin.
But it is the scenes set in and around the military crackdown on democracy activists that will have earned official ire.
A deeply sensitive issue in Chinese history, the government condemns the students and other activists who gathered on Tiananmen Square as "counter-revolutionary" and says crushing the movement was necessary to preserve order.
In Cannes, Lou said he would consider changing the film to meet censors' demands in order to ensure it could be screened in China.
Xinhua said the director would not be allowed to make films for five years and that his film and "five to 10 times the film's income" would be confiscated.