Melbourne International Film Festival Website Hacked
Melbourne International Film Festival Hacked
The Melbourne International Film Festival Website was hacked, with a Chinese flag and messages (in English) demanding that the festival apologize to all Chinese citizens for showing the Australian film 10 Conditions of Love, a documentary about Rebiya Kadeer, the Uighur activist the Chinese government believes incited the riots earlier this month between Uighurs and Han Chinese citizens.
All of the Chinese filmmakers who were slated to show films at this year’s festival withdrew their films and will not be attending.
And now there is news that Ken Loach has pulled his film Looking for Eric from the festival as a protest for the festival accepting sponsorship money from the Israeli government.
I do not want to editorialize on any of these actions, but I do feel for the organizers of the MIFF as they have put together a spectacular program of films that should be enjoyed without personal or national politics marring the screenings. We should all hope that this is not a new trend that will effect other festivals.
A link to the story in Variety Magazine
Tags: 10 Conditions of Love, Censorship, Ken Loach, Looking for Eric, Melbourne International Film Festival, politics, Rebiya Kadeer
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
It sounds like late 60s Cannes…when new wave directors withrew films and withheld festivals for supporting student and political movements…This is the internet version of that sabotage… Its true though, art and politics should mix, if at all, only on screen, not off it…
art n politics cannot have a separate existence. and an artist can never be apolitical.
i’m telling u, its the return of the 60s.
“art and politics should mix, if at all”
Pretty hard, artists have their own political leanings, and you can’t expect them to live in a vaccum.
A piece of art, is an event, which occurs in the creative or real world. The bystander who observes, analyzes and breaks down the even and if possible, the system which makes it happen is the greatest artist…However, It is impossible to live detached, and its ok, if that is a must, to put in your biases or what you stand for, on screen…
But off screen, when such an event to showcase art happanes, it is strange to deprive the audience, who are not involved in these back games of the pleasure…
I have attached the link of what happened in 1968 in Cannes…when the festival was called off…It was cool, revolutionary, responsible, maybe even relevant and fun…but audience and delegates suffered the most…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZQXtFXpO9Y
u sound logical but, somehow i dont agree with u Ram.
unless something like this happens, the world (audience) doesnt take notice. u can make a movie on rampant racism and other issues but then if its too radical it will definitely not see the light of day and even if ti does, there wont be many people who see it. the next best thing for an artist to do is to declare to the world that ‘i m not screening my movie here’. how many of us PFC readers would know about something like this happening in china unless there was a protest.
Its interesting that no one is addressing the real issues here. Any film festival or even such as this has to be completely independent of political standings. A film festival is an opportunity to screen films from all over the world, thus providing a voice to various political standings. By bowing down to a particular government, or taking sponsorship from another to screen film favourable to a particular government are all factors that compromise the integrity of the organisers.
You cant expect fair play, justice and total freedom from communists!
Communism is relative.
I respect art, but hosting a film trying to make a terrorist look nicer should be protested.