Zhu Rikun spent months planning a film festival that never happened.
As director of the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival, Zhu was to welcome filmmakers and directors from China to New York City for a small showcase of independent Chinese films this week, but he said concerns about harassment led to the event’s suspension two days before its scheduled Nov. 8 start.
Every day this week, Zhu has been showing up at the empty venue he had reserved for the film festival as a form of protest.
“It wasn’t the film festival I had prepared for,” the filmmaker told NBC News on Friday morning.
In a statement before the film festival was cancelled, the organizer said it received messages saying that filmmakers, directors and producers from China who were going to participate in the event, as well as their families, were facing harassment.
Many participants who withdrew from the independent film festival did not say why or cited “personal reasons,” but some said Chinese authorities had told them or their family members to do so, according to Zhu.
“I hope this announcement of the cancellation of the IndieChina Film Festival will make certain unknown forces stop harassing all directors, guests, former employees, volunteers and my friends and family,” Zhu said in a statement on the festival’s website.
When Zhu called off the film festival, it was too late to cancel the spot he had reserved. Throughout the week, he has gone to the event space, sometimes alone or with a handful of other filmmakers, to watch some films and discuss them.
“I’m still a filmmaker. I’m still a filmmaker from China and I’m still a curator of independent film,” Zhu said, adding that independent filmmaking in China “is really difficult; it’s extremely different from before.”
Before moving to New York City a decade ago, Zhu had worked on independent film festivals in China for nearly 20 years and co-founded the Beijing Independent Film Festival.
But independent film festivals in China began to face increasing repression after Chinese President Xi Jinping, known for his strict ideological control, took power in 2012, according to Human Rights Watch. The non-governmental organization that investigates human rights abuses around the world has said that Chinese authorities have closed the three major independent film festivals in China, including Zhu’s Beijing Independent Film Festival.
“In the end, all my film festivals were banned and none of them could continue,” Zhu said.
After what happened with his film festival in Beijing, Zhu had been reconsidering how to organize a film festival focused on Chinese independent films that could avoid censorship; The event in New York City was the first attempt to do so.
“The Chinese government reached out across the world to shut down a film festival in New York City,” Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s goal of controlling what the world sees and learns about China.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to an email from NBC News seeking comment.
China’s Foreign Ministry told the New York Times this week that it was not familiar with the specific circumstances surrounding the IndieChina Film Festival and that Human Rights Watch had “long been biased against China.”
