China Cans Beijing Independent Film Fest

Chinese authorities blocked an annual independent film festival from opening on Saturday, said organizers of an event that has become a rare and influential venue for the showing of films that could be critical of the government.

The Beijing Independent Film Festival's artistic director, Wang Hongwei, and executive director, Fan Rong, said authorities had forced the cancellation of the event, which was scheduled to run through Aug. 31. Wang and Fan are with the Li Xianting Film Fund, the festival's organizer.

Li Xianting, founder of the film fund and a film critic, posted memos in social media over the past week saying that state security personnel had been pressuring him to cancel the festival and that he had come under police surveillance. Both Wang and Fan verified the authenticity of Li's posts.

The festival, which began in 2006, has seen obstruction in past years, but this is the first time it's been dealt a complete shutdown, a sign that Beijing is tightening ideological controls under President Xi Jinping, said Chris Berry, professor of film studies at King's College London in England.

"It's very clear that the Xi Jinping regime is determined to control the ideological realm, which has not been emphasized so much for a long time," he said.

But Berry said that China is not new to shutting down independent film festivals, and that the ill treatment of the Beijing festival does not mark the end of the country's independent filmmaking, as filmmakers have found more venues in an increasingly diverse environment.

The boom in the mainstream movie industry, the rise of galleries that curate artwork based on moving images, and the Internet all have provided new opportunities, he said.

"Let's not be totally pessimistic," Berry said.

Police in the Beijing suburb of Songzhuang, where the event was supposed to open, said Saturday that they were unaware that the festival had closed. But security was tight at the would-be festival site, with about two dozen men blocking the area and preventing around 30 film directors and members of the public from entering.

The men, claiming to be villagers, tried to stop anyone from photographing or videotaping the scene, and in a scuffle, broke a video camera an Associated Press journalist was operating and took away the cellphone of another AP journalist. The phone was later returned.

Started as a film forum in 2006, the festival over the years has grown to be one of the most important events for China's independent films, but also has attracted the attention of authorities eager to regulate free speech.

In 2012, electricity was cut off shortly after the festival opened, but organizers still managed to show some new movies. Last year, the festival went on, although public screenings were banned.

In his memos, Li said police put him and the fund's office under surveillance Aug. 18, when this year's festival's poster and schedule were released online.

He said local authorities initially agreed to a compromise that the festival be moved to a town farther out in neighboring Hebei province, but that the management of the hotel where reservations were made informed the fund on Friday that police did not allow the hotel to host the festival.

Li said Fan and Wang were taken away by Songzhuang police on Friday afternoon and forced to sign a letter of promise to cancel the festival, before being freed five hours later. He said employees of the film fund were also informed that the electricity to the office would be cut off starting Saturday.

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AP videojournalists Isolda Morillo and Helene Franchineau contributed to this report.