Film Censorship in Hong Kong | Kino made in Hongkong – Zwischen China und der Welt | bpb.de

Introduction

During a panel discussion at the 2nd edition of the Hong Kong Film Festival UK held at London’s Genesis Cinema in March 2023, Hong Kong film director Kiwi Chow discussed the intensity of censorship that he is currently facing as a filmmaker in the “new Hong Kong”, meaning Hong Kong in the post-National Security Law (NSL) era from 2020 onwards, also dubbed 二次回歸, loosely translated as “second return to the motherland” – the 1997 handover is known as the “first return”, when Britain handed the sovereignty of Hong Kong over to the People’s Republic of China.

To an independent filmmaker like Chow, working on new projects is becoming increasingly impossible. He told the audience that self-censorship in Hong Kong has reached a new, unthinkable level: an actor dropped out from his new project under the pressure from their agency; another actor and their agency were initially okay to take part, but had already signed a paper with their agent in mainland China promising that they would not associate themselves with “the wrong people”; venues for screening or shooting locations wanted to vet his script before agreeing to work with him; almost no film companies or investors want to invest in his projects, and he has to turn to crowdfunding or other methods to raise funds for his upcoming films.

“I am always on the edge. There is this sense of danger. I have to get a backup director to fill my role just in case I get taken away. Every time could be my last time,” Chow said during the panel discussion. “Self-censorship is serious, and the government does not even need to do anything or vet the script, because the actors and venue operators are already doing that.”

The treatment that Chow is receiving in Hong Kong as a filmmaker may be surprising but not unexpected. He is one of the directors of the anthology Ten Years (Sap Nin, Jevons Au/Kiwi Chow/Zune Kwok/Ng Ka-Leung/Wong Fei-Pang, HK 2015), a dystopian depiction of an imagined future of Hong Kong that was denounced by Beijing, and the director behind Revolution of our Times (Si doi gaak ming, HK 2021), a documentary about the 2019 Hong Kong protests that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Both films, however, can no longer be shown in Hong Kong. They have been effectively banned in the city, along with several other feature films, short films as well as moving image works that have been banned or censored in recent years. Hong Kong, formerly a film and entertainment powerhouse known as “Hollywood of the East” and a beacon for freedom of expression, is showing growing resemblance to other Chinese cities, where the censorship of film, art, and other forms of creative expression are simply part of people’s daily lives in the post-NSL era.

To those who experienced Hong Kong between the 1970s up until 2020, the city’s “new normal” in the post-NSL may come as a shock. But censorship of films and other creative expressions is nothing new in Hong Kong. The system and the measures have always been there, they just evolve continuously in favour of the ruling regime’s political gains. This paper outlines the brief history of film censorship in Hong Kong under the British colonial regime, and highlights the key changes since Hong Kong was handed over to the People’s Republic of China in 1997.

Film censorship in British Hong Kong (1909-1997)

Early British colonial days up until Japanese occupation

The quick development of cinema at the turn of the 20th century came hand in hand with film censorship. In 1909, the Cinematograph Act came into force in the United Kingdom. Not only did it lay the legal foundation for local authorities to license cinematograph theatres, it also became the reference point for film censorship in colonies of the British Empire at the time.

The British colonial regime established stringent censorship rules in its colonies – including Hong Kong, which was occupied by the British and became a British colony in 1841 amid the First Opium War (1839-1842) – as an integral tool to govern and control the spreading of its ideas and values to subjects of the colonies at the time. But how this was executed in different places varied. In the case of Hong Kong, there was no such thing as a censorship board. Running the show was the Captain Superintendent of Police, who acted as the chief censor, assigning the censor duties to mid-level government officers. Censors were divided into small groups and were responsible for watching films the day before they were shown. Censorship in Hong Kong during the 1920s, however, was “fairly liberal” and exercised in “a light touch”, according to a US Consulate in Hong Kong report. The censor guidelines mainly addressed issues concerning the relations between the coloniser and the colonised, and race issues in the colony.

For example, depiction of “the white man in a degrading or villainous light,” “’imperialistic’ behaviour: i.e. armed conflict between the Chinese and the white man,” and “racial questions, especially the intermarriage of white persons with those of other races.” Sexual relationships between white women and non-white men were also considered sensitive, but not so much between white men and non-white women. One of the guidelines also pointed to films depicting Bolshevist or mob violence, as the “Chinese are easily worked up and there is quite enough mob violence going on at present”. Films “reflecting badly on the natives of India” were banished as a significant number of police officers in the then British colony were Indians, according to a 1926 correspondence from the US consulate.

A Censorship Board consisting of the Inspector General of Police, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, and the Director of Education, was established following the passing of a law in 1931. But the new system also included an appeals body, and a committee of three women, nominated by the local woman’s civic organisation The Helena May Institute, was also appointed to take part in reviewing films.

Censorship was considerably tightened in the 1930s amid the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, which was considered politically sensitive as the majority of the population of Hong Kong was ethnically Chinese, but there was also a significant number of Japanese people living in Hong Kong during that period of time. War scenes in China, for example, were banned. Censorship of films depicting Germans and Japanese also became the centre of controversies amid the growing tensions in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War II (WWII). The Japanese government pressured the colonial Hong Kong government not to show films that were against the Japanese interests in 1939. Films that appeared to be sympathetic to Nazi Germany were initially approved by the censors but later on banned. In 1939, Warner Bros.’ anti-Nazi film Confessions of a Nazi Spy (Anatole Litvak, USA 1939) was released in Hong Kong despite opposition from the German Consul General.

Censorship during the Cold War amid political turmoil in China (1940s-1970s)

As Hong Kong returned to British rule after the three years and eight months of Japanese occupation, which ended with Japan’s surrender in August 1945, the city then quickly became “a battleground between the Communists and the Guomindang (Kuomintang) on political and cultural fronts.” Film censorship in Hong Kong during this period became a handy political tool that allowed the colonial government to maintain Hong Kong’s neutrality between the two rivaling forces. By adjusting its censorship policy according to the changing geopolitical landscape, the colonial government could conveniently control the narratives by targeting pro-Communist or anti-Communist films at various times, while striving to keep the political turmoil away from Hong Kong.

After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claimed victory in the Civil War and founded the People’s Republic of China (PRC), prompting a mass migration of Chinese filmmakers (as well as capitalists, industrialists) to Hong Kong, the colonial government tightened its grip on film censorship to suppress communist propaganda and leftwing film. Meanwhile, when Communist China’s leader Mao Zedong set off the second Taiwan Straits Crisis in 1958, Hong Kong censors targeted PRC films but allowed Taiwanese films to be shown. Between 1953, when the colonial government established the official Film Censorship Regulations, and 1956, the Hong Kong-based, pro-Communist Southern Film Corporation submitted a total of 59 feature and documentary films as well as 34 news and short films, of which only five dramatic features, six operatic features and six documentary films were allowed to be shown in the city’s movie theatres. The move however caused backlash among the pro-Communist communities including the filmmaking community in Hong Kong, accusing Britain of recognising “two Chinas”.

Chinese Civil War

The Chinese Civil War fought between the Kuomintang-led Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party went on from 1927 till 1949, until the latter, which gained an upper hand following Japan’s defeat in WWII, took control of the mainland and the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan.

Second Taiwan Straits Crisis

The Second Taiwan Straits Crisis was set off when the PRC sent troops to shell the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu in 1958. Britain then became an unintended ally of Taiwan to show support for the US while striving to keep the region free from another brutal warfare as East Asia was still recovering from the aftermath of WWII and the Korean War which ended in 1953.

But this gradually changed in the following decade as the colonial Hong Kong authorities began to banish films that might offend China after the mid-1960s. For example, Taiwanese films referring to the Chinese communists as “bandits” were banned as part of Britain’s overall efforts in establishing full diplomatic relations with the PRC. At the same time, the Film Censorship Board of Review also stipulated in a 1965 statement that “no film should be banned simply because it is political in nature or has propaganda for the sole of main purpose,” with censors being advised to take on a more tolerant approach while at the same time beware of the sensitivities between the opposing camps from Taiwan and the PRC.

The shocking turmoil of the 1967 riots in Hong Kong was a watershed moment in Hong Kong history: What had started as a labour dispute in May 1967, escalated into several months of violent protests against the colonial government, with many protestors sympathising with the CCP amid the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) raging on mainland China. It might come as a surprise that propaganda films by pro-Communist studios were still allowed to be shown in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution, but it was a rather strategic move by the colonial government in order to keep the leftist radicals at peace, estimating that propaganda films had lost their appeal after the riots. At the same time, the film censors continued to keep a close eye on both films that glorify Mao as well as films that made derogatory remarks on the PRC or their leaders.

From 1965 to 1974, a total of 34 out of 357 banned films were censored on political grounds. Between 1973 and 1987, 21 films were banned for political reasons.

Censorship during the golden era of Hong Kong cinema (1980s-1997)

After the 1967 riots, Hong Kong entered a new era of economic prosperity, not least for the entertainment industry. Studios such as Shaw Brothers (founded in 1958) and later on Golden Harvest (founded in 1970), as well as the 1967 inauguration of Television Broadcasts (TVB, co-founded by Shaw Brothers’ Run Run Shaw) and the revamp of public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) drove Hong Kong’s film and entertainment industries and shaped the city’s unique and emerging cultural identity through popular culture, from film and TV series to Canto-pop. Names from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan and John Woo earned international recognition in the 1970s and 80s; Canto-pop also became a music genre that brings together the Chinese-speaking population around the world.

Political censorship of films, however, was still prevalent. Cecile Tang Shu-Shuen’s China Behind (Zai jian zhongguo, HK 1978), a dramatic feature set in 1966 following four students’ attempt to flee China to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution, was not approved for general viewing in Hong Kong until 1981, and wasn’t shown in the commercial cinema circuit until 1987. The film suffered from a prolonged ban as it “contains certain materials which are believed to be damaging to the good relationship between Hong Kong and another territory,” according to Pierre Lebrun, the Chief Film Censor in 1974. The film also faced criticism from the pro-Communist camp in Hong Kong. The 1981 Taiwanese films The coldest Winter in Peking (Huang tian hou tu, Pai Ching-Jui), which depicts the absurdity of the Cultural Revolution, and If I were real (Jia ru wo shi zhen de, Wang Toon), a screen adaptation of Sha Yexin’s play exposing corruption among Communist party members, were banned by the Television and Licensing Authorities citing “political propaganda” and declaring the films were “not in the interest of Hong Kong”. The ban was not lifted until 1989.

While the authorities attempted to keep politics away from films shown to the public, depiction of violence and content not suitable for younger audiences drew concern from the public. The film that sparked this debate and ultimately led to the implementation of a film classification system was John Woo’s classic A Better Tomorrow (Ying hung boon sik, HK 1986).

Film classification in Hong Kong

The colonial Hong Kong government introduced film classifications in the Movie Screening Ordinance Cap. 392 in 1988, classifying films in three different categories: Category I, suitable for all ages; Category II (subdivided into Category IIA, not suitable for children, and Category IIB, not suitable for younger persons and children); Category III, suitable for persons aged 18 or above only. “The objective is to allow adults wide access to films while protecting persons under the age of 18 from exposure to potentially harmful material,” according to Hong Kong government yearbook 2003.

While the film categorisation was put in place, political censorship of films remained intact until 1994. It was removed from the Film Censorship Ordinance only three years before Hong Kong was handed over to China. Nevertheless, the 1990s saw a golden era of Hong Kong cinema characterised by vibrant and expressive storytelling that had no lack of political subtext referencing the anxiety of Hong Kong’s handover to China, from comedies such as Alfred Cheung’s Her fatal Ways (Biu je, nei ho ye!, HK 1990) as well as Stephen Chow’s classics All for the Winner (Do sing, Jeffrey Lau/Corey Yuen, HK 1990) and From Beijing with Love (Gwok chaan ling ling chat, Stephen Chow/Lee Lik-Chi, HK 1994), to Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (Chung hing sam lam, HK 1994).

Film censorship in post-handover Hong Kong (1997-2023)

Self-censorship and the mainland market (2003-2013)

In the late 1990s to early 2000s, Hong Kong cinema suffered a tremendous blow. The annual production figure dropped from some 300 in the heydays to under 100. Film companies blamed rampant piracy. But crime thriller Infernal Affairs (Mou Gaan Dou, Andrew Lau/Alan Mak, HK) starring an ensemble cast including super stars Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai surprised everyone and broke the box office record when it was released in 2002, raking in HK$55 million (6.5 million euros) at the local box office. The film has since become a classic of Hong Kong cinema, not only did it sweep the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan the following year, it also became a key reference for filmmakers around the world—including Martin Scorsese, who directed the Hollywood remake The Departed (USA/HK 2006), which went on winning several Oscars including best picture.

The success of Infernal Affairs was solid proof of how vibrant Hong Kong cinema still was, inheriting the freedom and creative energy from before the handover. Despite the economic downturn brought by the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, hopes for the future of Hong Kong were still high as freedom of expression remained intact, just as promised in the “One Country, Two Systems” outlined in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration agreed between China and the UK, where Hong Kong’s social and economic systems, rights, freedoms and way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years, supposedly.

While films, creative expressions, and independent media outlets critical of the local authorities or Beijing were still allowed in Hong Kong at the time, those who wished to expand their businesses and explore the vast mainland Chinese market soon learned that they had to adapt to mainland rules. Such was the case of Infernal Affairs, which was released with a different ending in mainland China. In the original ending, Andy Lau’s character, a mole planted by the triads in the police force, walks free, while Tony Leung’s character, an undercover police officer infiltrating the triads, dies. In the alternative ending shot in order to pass the Chinese censors, Lau is arrested — a moralistic ending that puts “the bad guy” in jail.

The case of Infernal Affairs highlights the vast cultural and systematic differences between Hong Kong and mainland China, and the creation of an alternative ending to appease the mainland censors was merely the beginning of the changes of the Hong Kong cinema landscape in the decades to come.

The Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) signed on June 29, 2003 aimed to open up the mainland market for Hong Kong goods and services, including the film industry. At first, it was regarded as a saviour for the beleaguered Hong Kong film economy, as it granted Hong Kong films unprecedented access to the mainland market of 1.3 billion population: for example, from January 2004 onwards, Hong Kong-mainland China co-productions would be treated as domestic productions so that they could be exempted from the quota of 20 non-Chinese films per year; films produced only in Hong Kong would also be exempted from the quota, but needed to find a mainland distributor, a challenge especially for Cantonese-language films. The making of joint productions also became more accessible as the ratio of Hong Kong compared to mainland crew members increased from 30% to 50%.

The lucrative market had major appeal to Hong Kong film studios and A-list filmmakers, and throughout the decade after the implementation of CEPA, there was no lack of Hong Kong-China co-productions that made it to China’s box office top ten in their year of release. To name a few: The Warlords (Tou ming zhuang), a 2007 war epic by Peter Chan and Yip Wai-Man, Benny Chan’s crime thriller Invisible Target (Nam yi boon sik, 2007), historical action epic Bodyguards and Assassins (Shi yue wei cheng, 2009) by Teddy Chan, the Ip-Man-series (Ye Wen, Wilson Yip, 2008-2019), John Woo’s two-part costume drama war epic Red Cliff (Chi bi, HK/CHN/JPN/TWN/KOR/USA 2008 and 2009), Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Di renjie zhi tongtian diguo, 2010), crime thriller Overheard 2 (Sit ting fung wan 2, 2011) by Alan Mak and Felix Chong, and Soi Cheang’s The Monkey King (Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong, 2014).

While some Hong Kong filmmakers are enjoying tremendous commercial success in mainland China, the case of Infernal Affairs demonstrates that in order to gain approval from the mainland censors for national distribution, they must play by mainland rules. Certain topics and subject matters such as political jokes and ghosts (or any mention of the supernatural not rooted in Chinese folklore), which were integral genres of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and 90s, became off-limits. In other words, filmmakers must censor themselves and the stories they wish to tell in order to gain access to the lucrative mainland market, which has become financially indispensable for many.

The case of Ten Years (2015-16)

As Beijing began to tighten its grip on Hong Kong in the early 2010s, sparking fears of the loss of cultural identity and basic rights, resentment towards the authorities began to turn into political action, unveiling a decade-long political turmoil that gradually escalated. In less than five years Hong Kong experienced major protest movements from 2012’s protest against the introduction of the national education curriculum, rallies against the government’s rejection of Hong Kong Television Network’s free-to-air TV licence application, protests against parallel traders smuggling goods from Hong Kong to the mainland, to the outbreak of the 79-day Occupy Central protests in 2014, the so-called Umbrella Movement.

During this period, Hong Kong film-goers also experienced an awakening moment. Political and social movements raised the public's awareness of their unique Hong Kong cultural identity. Blockbusters co-produced with mainland China performed poorly at the local box office as audiences realised that these films were not made for them, but for an audience residing north of the border. They favoured films that speak to a local audience through jokes only they would understand, such as Pang Ho-Cheung’s comedy Vulgaria (Dai Juk Hei Kek, HK 2012), which became the second top-grossing local film that year, or through political subtext, such as Fruit Chan’s sci-fi horror The Midnight after (Na yeh ling san, ngoh choh seung liu wong gok hoi mong dai bou dik hung van, HK 2014), the fifth top-grossing local film in 2014.

Following the end of the Occupy Central Movement, which failed to push for a universal suffrage of the city’s Chief Executive without Beijing’s screening, Hong Kong’s civil society hit a new low. During this time, Ten Years, an anthology film depicting an imaginative dystopian future of Hong Kong in 2025, was released. The independent film made with a small budget of just HK$500,000 (under 60.000€) became a box office hit and scooped the best film award at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2016.

Initially, the film was released towards the end of 2015 and shown in several independent cinemas after being approved by the censors for public screening. This changed after the state-owned newspaper Global Times wrote in an editorial published in the beginning of 2016 Ten Years was “ridiculous” and promoting “desperation”. The film was pulled from theatres and no cinema was willing to screen it despite its box office success (scoring HK$6 million or over 700.000€ against its small production budget, grossing more ticket sales than Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams, USA 2015). When the film was shortlisted for the 2016 Hong Kong Film Awards, mainland media outlets decided to boycott the award show.

What happened to Ten Years at the time was only the beginning of a new form of censorship in Hong Kong: A censorship that does not need to be exercised through legal means, and for which the authorities do not need to take public responsibility. Merely one editorial published in a state-owned newspaper could act as an order, and all parties, especially those with vested interests in the mainland market (many of the cinema operators and film companies in Hong Kong have investments in China), immediately know how to act in order to show their loyalty to Beijing.

The National Security Law and the Post-NSL Era (2020-2023)

The decade of political turmoil in Hong Kong concluded with Beijing’s imposition of the sweeping National Security Law in 2020, following the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the largest political movement the city has seen since the 1967 riots. The initially peaceful protests against a proposed extradition law amendment that could send suspects to stand trial in mainland courts soon morphed into a citywide pro-democracy movement that often saw violent clashes between young protesters and riot police. Over several months more than two million Hongkongers participated in the protests, and more than 10.000 were arrested during that period of time.

On June 30, 2020, the National Security Law, which bans activities related to subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorism, came into effect. The vaguely worded law immediately sparked fear among Hongkongers. The authorities also revived a sedition law from the British colonial era. The legislation that was left unused for more than half a century “outlaws incitement to violence, to disaffection and to other offences against the administration.” Within about a year after the implementation of the NSL, independent media outlets including newspaper Apple Daily and online outlets Stand News and Citizen News were shut down. Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily, as well as editorial staff and journalists at Apple Daily and Stand News were jailed. Pro-democracy politicians and activists were put behind bars before they were tried at court. Hong Kong’s civil society has almost disappeared as non-profit organisations and individual civil groups disbanded. In a prominent case that marked another blow against civil society, five speech therapists were sentenced to 19 months in prison over the supposedly “seditious” children’s books they had published.

Cinema also quickly became a target. In March 2021, protest documentary film Inside the red Brick Wall (Lida Weicheng, Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, HK 2020), which documents a key chapter of the 2019 Hong Kong protests at the Polytechnic University, was pulled from screening. The film was named best film by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society in January 2021, but state-owned newspaper Wen Wei Po suggested that the film may violate the National Security Law and incite hatred towards Beijing and Hong Kong authorities. The cinema, operated by film company Golden Scene, cancelled the screenings. Although the film was not officially banned (it was however categorised as a Category III film only suitable for adults), the invisible pressure coming from Beijing mouthpieces was enough to stop the film from being screened, a déjà vu of the case of Ten Years.

Against such a backdrop, Hong Kong authorities passed a new film censorship law in October 2021, targeting content deemed to “endorse, support, glorify, encourage and incite activities that might endanger national security.” The heavy-handed and vaguely-worded censorship law worried the film industry and filmmakers. Rachel Cartland, a former official of the British Hong Kong government responsible for the political censorship of films in colonial times, commented: “I am sorry to see this amendment.” She added that by bringing back political censorship, Hong Kong had returned to the 1990s. “It is very hard to tell where the red line is.”

Following the new film censorship guidelines, a number of feature-length dramas, documentary films, and short films could officially not be shown in Hong Kong for political reasons, a first since 1994. In the case of feature-length films affected, those related to the 2019 Hong Kong protests were not even submitted to the censors and automatically pulled from the Hong Kong market following the incident of Inside the red Brick Wall. Documentary films include Kiwi Chow’s Revolution of our Times and Blue Island (HK 2022) by Chan Tze-Woon; the filmmakers behind dramatic feature May you stay young forever (Shao nian, Ren Xia/Sum Lam, HK 2021) simply state in the film’s trailer that their work cannot be shown in Hong Kong.

After the new film censorship law, several short films which had originally been approved for screening, were ordered to be resubmitted. This includes Taiwanese student short Piglet Piglet by Lin Tsung-yen, which had to be resubmitted for review just five hours before the original screening in November 2021. The film’s director was then ordered to cut footage of the 2020 presidential election campaign on grounds of “national security concerns”. In two similar instances in 2022, short film The dancing Voice of Youth (Erica Kwok, HK 2020) and animated short Losing Sight of a longed Place (Shek Ka Chun/Wong Chun Long/Wong Tsz Ying, HK 2017) were asked to be resubmitted even though they had not only been approved, but already screened before. In the case of The dancing Voice of Youth, the film’s director Erica Kwok was asked to change the allegedly seditious English subtitles, while with Losing Sight of a longed Place the filmmakers were ordered to cut a one-second frame depicting the 2014 Occupy Central protests. In all three cases, the filmmakers refused to make the changes and the screenings ended up being cancelled.

Even before the passing of the new film censorship law, short film Far from Home (HK 2021) hadn’t received approval to be screened in the first place. The film tells the story of a young woman who helps to tidy up the place of her boyfriend, a paramedic who was arrested during the 2019 protests. In June 2021 censors ordered the film’s director Mok Kwan-Ling to make 14 cuts and change the film’s title, which she also refused. Other films that never obtained approval from censorship include animated short The Cage (HK 2021) by Tsoi Wing-Chau, which touches on such topics as totalitarian rule, capitalism, freedom and resistance, Time and Time again (Asgard Wong, HK 2022), which depicts a character reminiscent of a missing student who was found dead during the 2019 protests and Taiwanese short Islander (2021), which depicts an imaginary future of Taiwan under the CCP rule while referencing the island’s White Terror period and was subsequently uploaded online by the film’s director Wu Zi-En.

Not only films deemed politically controversial were censored. In October 2022, Christopher Nolan’s 2008 Batman offering The Dark Knight (USA/UK) was banned from an outdoor screening in Hong Kong. The official reason given was the violence in the film, as it has however never been shown in mainland China because of the depiction of one Chinese character, Hong Kong residents and media outlets quickly suspected political motivations behind the ban. In March 2023, horror-slasher Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (UK) by Rhys Frake-Waterfield was pulled from theatres despite having obtained censors’ approval to screen in Hong Kong. No reason was given on why the film was pulled, but cartoon character Winnie the Pooh is widely believed to be the main reason, as the character has been used as a caricature of Chinese President Xi Jinping in the past and been banned in mainland China ever since. Just like with Ten Years and Inside the red Brick Wall, a film was censored by means outside the legal system. While political censorship was clearly outlined during the British colonial times, one must keep guessing where the red line is and when certain subject matters would still be allowed in a film, a new normal that filmmakers and creatives need to adapt to in post-NSL Hong Kong should they choose to stay in the city. Meanwhile, artists and creatives who fled because of imminent political threats or simply decided to leave as part of the ongoing migration wave, which already saw hundreds of thousands depart, are exploring stories about this growing Hong Kong diaspora.