Chinese Director Pulls Out Of Cannes

Chinese director Zhang Yimou has withdrawn two of his most recent works from the Cannes Film Festival, citing bias against productions from Communist China, state media reported on Tuesday. In a letter to festival directors printed in the Beijing Youth Daily, Zhang said Cannes organizers had painted his work in unwanted political overtones. I have decided to withdraw the two films and will not participate in this year's Cannes Film Festival,'' Zhang said. This is because I believe you have a serious misunderstanding about the movies.'' In the letter dated April 18, Zhang charged the West with seeing all Chinese cinema through a political lens. Everyone has their own opinion about whether a film is good or bad,'' he said. But what I cannot accept is that the West has for a long time politicized Chinese films. If they are not anti-government, they are just considered propaganda. I hope this bias can be slowly changed.'' One of the films Zhang pulled from the festival was his newest, Not One Less.'' The movie, which premiered in Beijing last week, is a sanguine look at the difficulties of educating children in rural China. Laced with humor and tales of personal suffering, the film was made with an all-amateur cast and marked a departure from his earlier, more cinematically breathtaking works such as Raise the Red Lantern'' and Red Sorghum.'' Zhang is one of China's few internationally recognized movie directors. He shot to fame in the late 1980s with a series of films shot in the rural countryside, featuring actress Gong Li. He ran into problems with Chinese censors in 1995 after his film To Live'' was shown without permission at Cannes.