Censored Cinema: “Lan Feng Zheng (The Blue Kite)”

The Wolfsonian–FIU and Miami International Film Festival present Censored Cinema, a film series running every Thursday in August that explores a national identity in film with a look at films banned in their country of origin. National censorship is currently a topic of much interest to many Americans as a result of the rapid rise of corporate media and the perceived encroachment of civil liberties in the name of security. Films are generally banned for one of three reasons: political, religious, or sexual content. We will discuss why individual films were objectionable to the state, what resulted from the ban, and how the ban affected the director, the state, or the public.

Lan Feng Zheng (The Blue Kite) (China, Zhuangzhuang Tian, 1993, Mandarin with English subtitles, 16mm, 138 min.) is the last film in the series. This magnificently shot film chronicles a politically uninvolved family's struggle to live through the grand-scale changes brought on by Chairman Mao's many social and cultural programs including the Rectification Movement, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution of 1966. The film's subtle criticism of the effects of these movements on the common man was thoroughly rejected by the state. This film has never been screened in China and its director was forbidden to create another film for ten years. Lan Feng Zheng (The Blue Kite) will be shown Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 7pm.