Newly-announced changes to the Chinese systems of film quotas and censorship have met with a mixed reaction from film-makers in the country.
The reforms, designed to ease the process with which domestic film-makers must submit screenplays to the government, will see 20 items dropped from official oversight responsibilities, key among them the ruling that completed scripts and thorough treatments will no longer be needed for advance inspection before a movie goes into production. Some projects will now require only a synopsis or treatment filed through the administration's website for review and approval.
Yet some in the Chinese directing community are skeptical of the limited reach of the reforms. The government regulator, the State General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SGAPPRFT), has decreed that only a limited number of films which touch on "ordinary topics" can progress through this new system. "Ordinary topics" has been defined by SGAPPRFT as anything apart from those films "which touch on ethnic, religious, and foreign affairs issues".
Director Jia Zhangke, who won the best screenplay award at Cannes in May for A Touch of Sin, an ultraviolent attack on his country's increasing consumerism, tweeted: "What can I do, as all of my films involve the Han," in reference to China's majority ethnic group.
Wang Xiaoshuai, who was one of a group of six directors who incurred the wrath of the authorities in the mid-1990s for films made without official approval said: "This 'ordinary' might not be very ordinary at all – we'll just have to see."
Screenplays which fail the Chinese authorities definition of "ordinary" will still need to get full script approval before production can begin.
