"BANNED" Film Wins Tribeca

Li Shaohong's television movie, STOLEN LIFE, won "Best Narrative Feature" at the Tribeca Film Festival.  The director, whose thrillingly good BAOBER IN LOVE still hasn't made it onto the film festival circuit despite doing big business in China in 2004, shot this flick as part of ABSOLUTE PRIVACY, a 10-episode television project based on the best-selling 1998 book "Absolute Privacy" written by Beijing Youth Daily journalist, An Dun, who based the book on young people's oral accounts of their lives.

STOLEN LIFE doles out the typical mainstays of Chinese art films: female suffering and lower class misery. At the awards ceremony, Li Shaohong claimed the film was "banned" in China. I'm not sure what this means (Chinese directors often claim their films are banned, even when they're not being shown for non-political legal reasons, such as they didn't clear their location permits). If anyone has some info on how or why this film is banned, I'd be keen to know.

(Thanks to Monkey Peaches for the info)