Demonstrations, Protests and Riots

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      ‘My Imaginary Country’ Review: Chile in Revolt

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      Patricio Guzmán, Chile’s cinematic conscience, chronicles the uprising that shook the country starting in 2019.The most powerful images in “My Imaginary Country” are of the demonstrations in the streets of Santiago, Chile, that began in October 2019. Hundreds of thousands of Chileans took to the streets, at first to protest a subway fare increase, and eventually to demand sweeping changes to the nation’s economic and political order. They were met with tear gas, baton charges and plastic bullets aimed at their eyes. Some fought back with cobblestones chiseled from the street, which they hurled at the police.To watch scenes like that in a documentary film — or, for that matter, on social media — is to experience a strong sense of déjà vu. What happened in Santiago in 2019 and 2020 feels like an echo of similar uprisings around the world; in Tehran in 2009 (and again this week); in Arab capitals like Tunis, Damascus and Cairo in 2011; in Kyiv in 2014; in Paris at the height of the Yellow Vest movement in 2018. Those episodes aren’t identical, but each represents the eruption of long-simmering dissatisfaction with a status quo that seems stubbornly indifferent to the grievances of the people.Accompanying the exhilaration that these pictures might bring is a sense of foreboding. In almost every case, these rebellions ended in defeat, disappointment, stalemate or worse. The buoyant democratic promise of Tahrir Square in Cairo has been smothered by a decade of military dictatorship. Ukrainian democracy, seemingly victorious after the Maidan “revolution of dignity,” has since faced internal and external threats, most recently from Vladimir Putin’s army.Jehane Noujaim’s “The Square” and Evgeny Afineevsky’s “Winter on Fire” are excellent in-the-moment films about Tahrir and Maidan, and “My Imaginary Country” belongs in their company. But it also has a resonance specific to Chile, and to the career of its director, Patricio Guzmán, who brings a unique and powerful historical perspective to his country’s present circumstances. He has seen events like this before, and has reason to hope that this time might be different.Guzman, now in his early 80s, can fairly be described as Chile’s biographer, and also its cinematic conscience. His first documentary, footage from which appears in this one, was about the early months of Salvador Allende’s presidency, which began in an atmosphere of optimism and defiance in 1970 and ended in a brutal U.S.-supported military coup three years later. Guzman’s account of Allende’s fall and the repression that followed is the three-part “Battle of Chile,” which he completed while exiled in France, and which stands as one of the great political films of the past half-century.More recently, in another trilogy— “Nostalgia For the Light,” “The Pearl Button” and “Cordillera of Dreams” — Guzman has explored Chile’s distinct cultural and geographical identity, musing on the intersections of ecology, demography and politics in a mode that is lyrical and essayistic. In “My Imaginary Country” he cites the French filmmaker Chris Marker as a mentor, and they share a spirit of critical humanism and a habit of looking for the meaning of history in the fine grain of experience.While this is a first-person documentary, with the director providing voice-over narration, it expresses a poignant humility and a patient willingness to listen. Guzman interweaves footage of the demonstrations into interviews with participants, most of them young and all of them women.This revolution, which culminated in the election of Gabriel Boric, a leftist in his 30s, to Chile’s presidency and a referendum calling for a new constitution, arose out of the economic frustrations of students and working people. But Guzman and the activists, scholars and journalists he talks to make clear that feminism was always central to the movement. They argue that the plight of poor and Indigenous Chileans can’t be understood or addressed without taking gender into account, and that the equality of women is foundational to any egalitarian politics.“My Imaginary Country” ends with a new constituent assembly — including many veterans of the demonstrations — meeting to write a new constitution that they hope will finally dispel the legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s long dictatorship. After the film was completed, voters rejected their first draft, a setback to Boric and to the radical energy Guzman’s film captures and celebrates. Whatever the next chapter will be, we can hope that he is around to record it.My Imaginary CountryNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Riotsville, USA’ Review: A Fake Town to Explore Ongoing Unrest

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      A documentary delves into the responses to the 1960s protests, revealing uncomfortable truths about that time and ours.The mid-1960s saw a conspicuous rise in civil unrest in the United States. The war in Vietnam, substandard living conditions for people of color, and a larger shift in consciousness all contributed to people wielding violence as a tool of protest. The new documentary “Riotsville, USA.,” shows the federal government’s response to this tactic as both sinister and, in some sense, laughable.The Riotsville of the title is the name of a fake town built as a training ground for law enforcement, in which riot story lines were enacted by soldiers and police forces. More than one of these towns were built by the U.S. government in collaboration with local police departments, with the events filmed for official review. The documentary’s director, Sierra Pettengill, uses a variety of archival footage here. There are government films of Riotsville exercises, clips from talk shows, and a mini-narrative of a public television station whose progressive politics led to its defunding by the Ford Foundation. And of course, searing images from riots in Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark, Memphis and Miami.A federal government advisory commission on civil disorder actually concluded that the rioters had something to riot about. They recommended sweeping policies to redress inequities. The activist H. Rap Brown, who was in jail when the report came out, said the people on the commission ought to be in a cell too, as “they’re saying what I’ve been saying.” The only recommendation lawmakers acted on, however, was to increase police budgets.The film’s tone, largely defined by narration written by the essayist Tobi Haslett and read by Charlene Modeste, is often one of weary exasperation. At times, though, Haslett’s words are charged with indignation, which arguably overwhelms the reportage, as in Haslett’s heated account of the media coverage of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. To this complaint, one imagines Haslett might respond, “Too bad.” This is not an objective film. It is a polemic, a work of activism, a challenge to the viewer.Riotsville, USANot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Boston Revisits ‘Common Ground’ and Busing, Onstage

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      The Huntington Theater Company is staging a play based on the seminal J. Anthony Lukas book, reconsidering the legacy of the busing crisis.BOSTON — It’s been nearly half a century since a federal judge ordered the city schools here desegregated by busing, and 37 years since the writer J. Anthony Lukas plumbed the resultant turmoil in his Pulitzer-winning tome, “Common Ground,” which entered the canon of seminal Boston texts.Now a leading nonprofit theater here, arguing that the shadow of busing and the depictions in “Common Ground” continue to shape this city’s reputation and its race relations, is staging a reconsideration of the book, filtered through the prism of a diverse group of contemporary artists.The play, “Common Ground Revisited,” which opened June 10 at the Huntington Theater Company, has been 11 years in the making, begun as a thought experiment in a classroom at Emerson College, and delayed, like so many stage projects, by the coronavirus pandemic. The cast is made up of Boston actors, and the work layers their observations on top of the events in the book, which follows the busing crisis through the lives of three families.“This book has a strong, vibrant legacy in Boston — many people have read it, and there are varying opinions about it and what it means,” said the playwright Kirsten Greenidge, who developed the project with Melia Bensussen; Greenidge wrote the adaptation, and Bensussen, who is the artistic director of Hartford Stage, directed it.“We’re insistent on the ‘revisited’ part,” Greenidge said. “It’s not a straight up adaptation of the book — it’s having the book be in conversation with us, in the present day.”The play, bracketed by several alternative ways of staging — and seeing — a final high school encounter between two students, one Black and one white, is not a takedown of the book, but does gently suggest that there are other historical figures whose stories also matter to Boston’s history, or, as one actor says during the play, “There’s more than one book.”The play, like the book on which it is based, depicts three families affected by busing. Cast members include Lyndsay Allyn Cox, Shanaé Burch, Omar Robinson, Elle Borders and Kadahj Bennett. T Charles Erickson“Boston, to me, as it was sold: Revolutionary War, maybe a little bit of busing, and then somehow we’re here, with ‘The Departed,’ ‘The Town’ and ‘Good Will Hunting’ sprinkled in there,” said Omar Robinson, a Baltimore native who relocated to Boston and is one of the actors in the cast. “But our actual history is so rich and multicultural and Black, and that is very frequently overlooked. Maybe not anymore, hopefully.”That history can sometimes feel very present, and sometimes very distant. The play is being staged in the city’s South End, described in “Common Ground” as “a shabbier, scruffier part of the city,” but now polished and pricey. The city, long led by white men, now has its first Asian American mayor, Michelle Wu; she followed an acting mayor, Kim Janey, who was the first Black person to hold that office, and who had been among those bused for desegregation purposes when she was a child.The school district’s demographics have also changed enormously: Today, just 14.5 percent of students in the Boston public schools are white, down from 57 percent in 1973. And the school system is about half the size it was: There are currently 48,957 students, down from 93,647. (By comparison, in New York City there are about 1 million public school students, of whom 14.7 percent are white.)Although many in the 12-person Huntington ensemble are too young to have lived through the busing crisis, it still looms large. During that era, the actress Karen MacDonald’s stepfather taught at the city’s Hyde Park High School; the actor Michael Kaye’s friend’s father was a state trooper assigned to Charlestown High School, where busing had been greeted by walkouts, protests and an attempted firebombing of the building.Kadahj Bennett, another member of the cast, noted that the events of those days had changed the course of his own schooling a generation later. “My father is an immigrant from Jamaica, moved here and he was involved in busing — he got bused to West Roxbury High and had a miserable time,” he said. “With that, my parents decided I wasn’t going to go to public school.”Theodore C. Landsmark, a city planner and scholar who now directs an urban policy research center at Northeastern University, was on his way to a meeting at Boston City Hall in 1976 when he was attacked by a man wielding an American flag. This photograph, by Stanley Forman, won a Pulitzer Prize.StanleyFormanPhotoOne striking aspect of performing a play about recent history in the city where it took place: Many people in the audience have memories of the scenes depicted, or even know some of the characters. Some nights, the actors say, patrons come up to tell them what they got wrong, or right, in portraying the city and its struggles, and to share their own memories.Some still have deeply personal connections to the history being depicted.Tito Jackson, a former Boston city councilman and mayoral candidate who now runs a cannabis company, has a particularly remarkable link: He learned a few years ago that his birth mother was Rachel E. Twymon, who was a child in one of the families featured in the book. Twymon became pregnant at age 12, and her mother insisted that the child be given up for adoption. Just last year, The Boston Globe reported that Jackson had discovered he was that child.“I read the book four or five times when I was in college — I was a history and sociology major — so finding out that my birth was in the book was a huge surprise and pretty emotional,” Jackson said in an interview. The book describes the pregnancy that led to Jackson’s birth as the result of sexual experimentation and “foolin’ around,” but Twymon said the truth is she was raped, and Jackson credits the Huntington play with making that clear.“Her life was indelibly stamped, and often framed, by this book, and, frankly, the short shrift that the book gave to a pregnancy and the birth of a child,” Jackson, who is now 47, said. “Then the folks at Emerson questioned how a 12-year-old, in 1975, with one of the strictest moms ever, got pregnant.”Jackson said of the play, “I’m very touched, and I feel that Rachel’s story — her perspective as well as her truth — was finally acknowledged.”His mother, who is now 60, is less enthusiastic, feeling that the play doesn’t sufficiently capture the horrors of the busing era. “You’re talking about a time when things were very hectic, and very unstable,” Twymon said. “The play was told nicely, and that’s not how Boston was at that time.”“Boston, to me, as it was sold: Revolutionary War, maybe a little bit of busing, and then somehow we’re here, with ‘The Departed,’ ‘The Town’ and ‘Good Will Hunting’ sprinkled in there,” said the actor Omar Robinson (foreground). T Charles EricksonAnother intense personal connection to the play is that of Theodore C. Landsmark, who now directs an urban policy research center at Northeastern University. Landsmark has had a distinguished career, but will forever be known as the Black man who was set upon by a white man wielding an American flag as a weapon in Boston’s City Hall Plaza in 1976; Stanley Forman’s photograph of the assault won a Pulitzer Prize, and came to symbolize the racism and violence of the busing era.“Initially I found it off-putting to have all of my life defined by that one moment,” Landsmark, 76, said. “Over time I’ve gotten used to it, and I recognize it’s an opportunity to talk about things I care about — the inequalities that continue to exist in Boston, particularly within our professional ranks.”Landsmark said “Common Ground” remains hugely influential. “The book is assigned to all kinds of high school and college classes as a point of entry into understanding Boston, and I know that many people look at Boston through the prism of ‘Common Ground’,” he said. “People who have never been to the city will immediately raise either the book or the photograph as a reason for their reluctance to relocate from places that are easily as racist as Boston is.”Bensussen, the director, said she wasn’t sure whether the play would have a life outside Boston, given its intensely local focus, but noted that local students were more likely to study the national Civil Rights movement than the Boston busing crisis, and said she was hopeful that the play might prompt some rethinking of that. Landsmark said he could imagine excerpts from the play being staged in a variety of settings to spark discussion about ongoing forms of segregation.As for the actors, several of them said they wanted to feel optimistic that progress is underway, but were torn about whether that is realistic given the state of the nation today.“I want there to be hope, but it’s not a thing I see every day — it’s not a thing I’ve encountered during my nearly 20 years in the city,” Robinson said. “Reading this book, working on this, it shined a bright light on its past, and therefore its present, in a lot of ways for me. Not just here in Boston — this country has got a loaded history. But I hope for hope.” More

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      Disney Says It Hopes Florida Anti-LGBTQ Law Is ‘Struck Down’

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      Moments after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bill into law on Monday, Disney released a statement condemning it and saying that its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down by the courts.” Disney employs roughly 80,000 people in the Orlando area.Labeled by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay,” the law restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also gives parents an option to sue a school district if they think the policy has been violated.This month, Disney was criticized by many of its employees for refusing to take a public stand against the legislation, leading to a series of moves from the company’s chief executive, Bob Chapek. Mr. Chapek broke the company’s silence and stated Disney’s opposition; apologized repeatedly; paused political giving in Florida pending a review; and created a task force to develop an action plan for Disney to be a more positive force for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, including through its content for families. He is going on a listening tour at Disney workplaces, both domestically and overseas, this week.On March 9, Mr. Chapek told shareholders at Disney’s annual meeting that he had called Mr. DeSantis to “express our disappointment and concern” about the bill. “The governor heard our concerns, and agreed to meet with me and L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of our senior team in Florida as a way to address them,” he said.Mr. DeSantis responded with defiance, promptly deriding the company as “Woke Disney” in a fund-raising email to supporters. On Monday, as he signed the bill, Mr. DeSantis said: “I don’t care what Hollywood says. I don’t care what big corporations say. Here I stand. I’m not backing down.”The hosts of the Academy Awards on Sunday made fun of the legislation during their opening stand-up routine.In its statement on Monday, Disney added that it was committed to the national and state organizations working to overturn the law. “We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of the Disney family,” the company said, “as well as the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community in Florida and across the country.” More

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      ‘Patria y Vida’: How a Cuban Rap Song Became a Protest Anthem

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      MEXICO CITY — As thousands marched across Cuba last July in an astonishing protest against the Communist regime, many shouted and sang a common refrain: “Patria y vida!” or “Homeland and life!”The phrase comes from a rap song of the same name, which has become an anthem for a burgeoning movement of young people taking to the internet and to the streets, demanding an end to political oppression and economic misery.The song, written by Yotuel Romero, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo, Eliecer “el Funky” Márquez Duany and the reggaeton pair Gente de Zona, is nominated for two Latin Grammys, including song of the year, and will be performed on the show Thursday night.“These are the first Grammy Awards for the people of Cuba, the first Grammys for freedom,” Romero said in a phone interview from Miami. “These are the first Grammys where it’s not Yotuel nor Gente Zona that are nominated, it’s patria y vida, it’s Cuba.”The song is a rare instance of Cuban artists directly taking on the regime: The title is a twist on one of the most iconic slogans of the Cuban revolution, patria o muerte, (homeland or death), a phrase that Fidel Castro often used to end his speeches.“It was the antithesis of homeland or death — homeland and life,” Romero said. “I knew that phrase was going to bring a lot of controversy.”And generate controversy it did.After it was released in February, the song was heavily criticized by government figures like President Miguel Díaz-Canel and former culture minister Abel Prieto, who called the track a “musical pamphlet.” and wrote, “There’s nothing more sad than a chorus of annexationists attacking their homeland” on Twitter.But the official criticism did little to stem the song’s popularity. After decades of isolation, internet use became widespread in Cuba in 2018 — many young Cubans are now highly active on social media, where the anthem spread like wildfire. The accompanying video has been viewed more than 9 million times on YouTube.The song’s release came just a few months after hundreds of artists, intellectuals and others demonstrated outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana to protest a slew of recent arrests, including that of the rapper Denis Solís.“That protest transformed the narrative of the opposition in Cuba,” said Rafael Escalona, the director of the Cuban music magazine AM:PM. “There was fertile ground for someone to reap the fruits and create a protest anthem.”On July 11, “Patria y Vida” was transformed into a rallying cry, when Cuba witnessed its largest protests in decades, with Cubans protesting over power outages, food shortages and a lack of medicines.“This is my way of telling you, my people are crying out and I feel their voice,” the song says. “No more lies, my people ask for freedom. No more doctrines, let’s not sing of homeland or death but homeland and life.”Hundreds of people were jailed after the July demonstrations, and at least 40 more were detained on Monday as the regime moved to stifle another planned march.The risks extended to the songwriters too.While most of the artists who collaborated on the song were well known internationally before the track’s release and were also living outside of Cuba, Maykel Osorbo and El Funky still lived on the island: Both were arrested earlier this year, and Osorbo remains in jail. Romero, who lives in Miami, said that he cannot return to the island for fear of arrest.But despite the crackdown, Romero said he is confident that the emerging movement fomented by Cuba’s youth and given a soundtrack by “Patria y Vida” is only just getting started.“This is no longer a movement, it’s generation. It’s the generation patria y vida,” he said. “The generation patria y vida has come to bury the generation patria o muerte.”Carlos Melián Moreno contributed reporting from Santiago, Cuba. More

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      Talking About ‘Attica,’ the Newest Documentary on the Prison Uprising

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      Fifty years after the fact, the filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry reflect on the bloody standoff and what it accomplished.On Sept. 9, 1971, hundreds of inmates took over the Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo to demand better conditions. “Attica,” a new documentary directed by Stanley Nelson and co-directed by Traci A. Curry, recounts the occupation and the massacre that followed on Sept. 13 when armed law enforcement officers stormed the prison and 39 inmates and hostages were killed under sustained police gunfire and tear-gassing.Holding more than 40 prison staff members hostage, the inmates set up tents and latrines and allowed journalists to enter as crowds massed outside the walls. The prisoners’ grievances ranged from violence and overcrowding to political rights abuses and insufficient toilet paper (one roll a month, according to a report in The New York Times). In negotiations with the prisoners, Russell Oswald, the state’s commissioner of corrections, had reportedly agreed to nearly all their demands, but after the death of a hostage, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, in consultation with President Richard M. Nixon, ordered state troopers to take over the prison. For the anniversary, Nelson and Curry dug deep, speaking to former prisoners and figures who had been on the scene, such as the TV journalist John Johnson and the negotiation intermediary Herman Schwartz, a law professor. (Former guards had initially agreed to participate, Curry said, but later declined.) Curry, Nelson and I spoke by phone about recapturing the lived reality of Attica and its enduring importance. These are edited excerpts from those conversations.What does your documentary show us about Attica?STANLEY NELSON Attica is the largest prison rebellion in the history of the United States. The big thing is that the prisoners held over 30 guards as hostages, and invited in TV cameras and reporters. And if you let camera-people loose, they just film! There’s a fantastic moment where the prisoners say that they’ve been watching [Russell] Oswald, the commissioner of prisons, say something different to reporters outside the gates from what they negotiated inside.In addition, the New York State Police were videotaping on very early video cameras, Portapaks. They were up on the prison towers shooting through the cross hairs of a rifle scope, using it as a Telephoto lens. They left the mic open, so you can hear them talking about the prisoners and what’s going on.What shocked you most about the events?NELSON The whole thing was shocking but it’s the overt racism that is so evident, from the guards and law enforcement yelling “White power!” to the state police, who are talking about the “ugliest, blackest Negro gentleman” they’ve ever seen, to Richard Nixon on the phone with Rockefeller, and his first question is “Is it the Blacks?”And one thing that’s never talked about is why the prisoners rebelled. It’s almost like we as nonprisoners feel, well, of course they’re mad — they’re in jail. But the prisoners had specific reasons. They went from small mistreatments to complete brutalization and beatings. The prisoners had 30 demands, and the prison system had agreed to 28 of them. They were close!TRACI A. CURRY I think the most shocking was what happened on the day of the retaking: the wanton violence and the brutality, and the fact that it continued long after the prison was secured and there was no legitimate reason to think that these people were a threat anymore.What was it like talking to former prisoners and family members of guards?NELSON Traci Curry did the interviews. The ex-prisoners were so vivid and their memories were so intact. And we always knew that we wanted to talk to the family members of guards, because so many of the families were also devastated by what happened. Their loved ones were killed or in some cases emotionally destroyed.CURRY Even 50 years later, the memories and the emotions were just beneath the surface, whether it was rage, sadness, or disbelief. I saw my job as creating the safest space possible for them to tell their story in their words. There’s no voice of God “Morgan Freeman” that comes in to fill in the blanks.How does the movie resonate with today’s issues of racial justice?NELSON It’s law and order carried to its extreme, and I think it’s the start of a whole different turn in American history. You can’t see the film without thinking about where we are today. There’s over 2 million people incarcerated. The headline in The New York Times today is about Rikers Island. And part of the unspoken truth in the film is that we want to put people in jail and forget about them.CURRY I’m sitting in my apartment where I made most of this film, and there were days where there were George Floyd protests moving outside my window and I saw police officers descend upon protesters. I think we all saw the way that people in prisons were treated at the peak of the pandemic. We all saw the former president attack protesters outside of the White House and then use that attack as a political opportunity. Those parallels were so resonant for me, and it crystallized for me that this is a story about what happens when people challenge the state’s abuse of its power.What was it like filming at Attica?CURRY There’s a lot of emotions around how people there want to frame this narrative. I spent weeks getting all of the necessary permissions from the Corrections Department of New York State to film. But once we got up there, it was a very different thing. We had a couple of encounters with law enforcement. We were stopped and told that we were reported as a suspicious vehicle. I had an angry resident screaming at me in my face calling me a liar. It was a very intense period. More

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      How Hong Kong Censors Films to Protect National Security

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      The Asian film capital has cracked down on documentaries and independent productions that it fears could glamorize the pro-democracy movement.HONG KONG — The director of “Far From Home,” a short, intimate film about a family caught in the tumult of the 2019 antigovernment protests in Hong Kong, had hoped to show off her work at a local film festival in June.Then the censors stepped in.They told the director, Mok Kwan-ling, that her film’s title — which in Cantonese could carry a suggestion of cleaning up after a crime — must go. Dialogue expressing sympathy for an arrested protester had to be excised. Scenes of removing items from a room also had to be cut, apparently because they might be construed as concealing evidence.In total, Ms. Mok was ordered to make 14 cuts from the 25-minute film. But she said that doing so would have destroyed the balance she had attempted to forge between the views of protesters and those who opposed them. So she refused, and her film has thus far gone unseen by the public.“It was quite contradictory to a good narrative and a good plot,” she said. “If a person is completely good or completely bad, it’s very boring.”Hong Kong’s world-famous film scene, which nurtured groundbreaking directors like John Woo and Wong Kar-wai, has become the latest form of expression to be censored since Beijing imposed a tough new national security law on the former British colony last year.Mok Kwan-ling, an independent film director, was ordered by the censors to make 14 cuts and to change the name of her film, “Far From Home.”Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesIn March, a local theater pulled the prizewinning protest documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall,” after a state-run newspaper said it incited hatred of China. At least two Hong Kong directors have decided to not release new films locally. When an earlier film by one of those directors was shown to a private gathering last month, the gathering was raided by the police.Directors say they fear the government will force them to cut their films — and, potentially, put them in prison — if they dismiss demands and show their work.“Under the national security law, Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong,” said Jevons Au, a director who moved to Canada shortly after the sweeping law was imposed. “Hong Kong is a part of China, and its film industry will finally turn into a part of China’s film industry.”Beyond the national security law, the government plans to toughen its censorship policies to allow it to ban or force cuts to films deemed “contrary to the interests of national security.” Such powers would also be retroactive, meaning the authorities could bar films that were previously approved. People that show such films could face up to three years in prison.“Part of the underlying goal of this law is to intimidate Hong Kong filmmakers, investors, producers, distributors and theaters into internalizing self-censorship,” said Shelly Kraicer, a film researcher specializing in Chinese-language cinema. “There will be a lot of ideas that just aren’t going to become projects and projects that aren’t going to be developed into films.”The new restrictions are unlikely to trouble bigger-budget Hong Kong films, which are increasingly made in collaboration with mainland companies and aimed at the Chinese market. Producers already work to ensure those films comply with mainland censorship. Likewise, distributors and streaming services like Netflix, which is available in Hong Kong but not mainland China, are wary of crossing red lines.“Netflix is a business first,” said Kenny Ng, an expert on film censorship at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Film. “They show unconventional films, including politically controversial films, but only from a safe distance. I think Netflix has bigger concerns about access to commercial markets, even in mainland China.”Netflix representatives did not reply to requests for comment.Golden Scene, a Hong Kong movie theater, pulled the protest documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall” after it was attacked by a pro-Beijing newspaper.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesThe most likely targets of the new rules, which are expected to be approved this fall by Hong Kong’s legislature, are independent documentaries and fictional films that touch on protests and opposition politics.“For those independent filmmakers who really want to do Hong Kong stories in Hong Kong, it will be very challenging,” said Mr. Au, the director who moved to Canada. “They will have a lot of obstacles. It might even be dangerous.”The documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall” was shot by anonymous filmmakers who followed protesters at Hong Kong Polytechnic University when they were besieged by police for two weeks in 2019. In addition to the film being pulled from the local theater, the Arts Development Council of Hong Kong withdrew a $90,000 grant to Ying E Chi, the independent film collective that released it.The censorship office had initially approved the documentary for audiences over 18, but now some in the film industry believe it could face a retroactive ban.Creators of the fictional film “Ten Years,” which examined the fears of vanishing culture and freedoms that invigorated the resistance to China’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, say it could also be targeted under the new rules. The filmmakers had difficulties finding venues when the movie was released in 2015, but now it might be banned completely, said Mr. Au, who directed one vignette in the five-part film.Kiwi Chow, who also directed part of “Ten Years,” knew that his protest documentary “Revolution of Our Times” had no chance of being approved in Hong Kong. Even its overseas premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July required special precautions. It was shown on short notice near the end of the festival so Beijing couldn’t pressure the organizers to block it.“I need to do what’s right and not let fear shake my beliefs,” said Kiwi Chow, who directed a documentary on the protests in Hong Kong.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesMr. Chow sold the film rights to a European distributor and, before he returned to Hong Kong, deleted footage of the film from his own computers out of fear he might be arrested.Some of the subjects of the 152-minute film, including pro-democracy activists such as Benny Tai and Gwyneth Ho, are now in jail. Mr. Chow feared he, too, might be arrested. Friends and family warned him to leave the city, release the film anonymously or change its title. The title is drawn from the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times,” which the government has described as an illegal call for Hong Kong independence.But Mr. Chow said he ultimately went ahead with the film as he had envisioned it out of a sense of responsibility to the project, its subject and crew.“I need to do what’s right and not let fear shake my beliefs,” he said.While he has yet to face direct retaliation, he said there were signs it could be coming.When he attended a small, private showing of “Beyond the Dream,” a nonpolitical romance that he directed, the police raided the event. Mr. Chow and about 40 people who attended the screening at the office of a pro-democracy district representative were each fined about $645 for violating social distancing rules.“It seems like a warning sign from the regime,” he said. “It’s not very direct. It’s still a question whether the regime has begun its work: Has a case on me been opened?” More

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      Times Analyzed 3,000 Videos of Capitol Riot for Documentary

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      Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.On Jan 6., as rioters were attacking the U.S. Capitol, Times journalists on the Visual Investigations team were downloading as many recordings of the violence as they could find.Over the next six months, the team, which combines traditional reporting techniques with forensic visual analysis, gathered over 3,000 videos, equaling hundreds of hours. The journalists analyzed, verified and pinpointed the location of each one, then distilled the footage into a 40-minute documentary that captured the fury and destruction moment by moment. The video, the longest the team has ever produced, provides a comprehensive picture of “a violent assault encouraged by the president on a seat of democracy that he vowed to protect,” as a reporter says in the piece.The visual investigation, “Day of Rage,” which was published digitally on June 30 and which is part of a print special section in Sunday’s paper, comes as conservative lawmakers continue to minimize or deny the violence, even going as far as recasting the riot as a “normal tourist visit.” The video, in contrast, shows up-close a mob breaking through windows, the gruesome deaths of two women and a police officer crushed between doors.“In providing the definitive account of what happened that day, the piece serves to combat efforts to downplay it or to rewrite that history,” said Malachy Browne, a senior producer on the Visual Investigations team who worked on the documentary.“It serves the core mission of The Times, which is to find the truth and show it.”Haley Willis, a producer on the team who helped gather the footage, said that some of the searches required special techniques but that much of the content was easily accessible. Many of the videos came from social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Parler, a platform that was popular with conservatives and later shut down. The team also collected recordings from journalists on the scene and police radio traffic, and went to court to unseal body camera footage.“Most of where we found this information was on platforms and places that the average person who has grown up on the internet would understand,” Ms. Willis said.In analyzing the videos, the team members verified the images, looked for specific individuals or groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and identified when and where each one was filmed. Then they put the videos on a timeline, which allowed them to reconstruct the scenes by the minute and track the key instigators.David Botti, a senior producer, said the team wanted to use this footage to explain how the riot happened, to underscore just how close the mob came to the lawmakers and to explore how much worse it could have gotten. For example, the investigation tracked the proximity of the rioters to former Vice President Mike Pence and an aide who was carrying the United States nuclear codes.“It’s rare to get an event of this magnitude that’s covered by so many cameras in so many places by so many different types of people filming with different agendas,” Mr. Botti said. “There was just so much video that someone needed to make sense of it.”Dmitriy Khavin, a video editor on the team, said he wanted viewers to feel like they were on the scene. But he also recognized the images were graphic, so he tried to modulate the pace with slower moments and other visual elements like maps and diagrams.“This event was overwhelming,” Mr. Khavin said. “So we worked a lot on trying to make it easier to process, so it’s not like you’re being bombarded and then tuning out.”Carrie Mifsud, an art director who designed the print special section, said her goal was similar, adding that she wanted to stay true to the video’s foundation. “For this project, it was the sequence and the full picture of events,” she said. Working with the graphics editors Bill Marsh and Guilbert Gates, she anchored the design in a timeline and included as many visuals and text from the documentary as possible to offer readers a bird’s-eye view of what happened.“My hope is that the special section can serve as a printed guide to what happened that day, where it started, and the aftermath, Ms. Mifsud said.For the journalists on the Visual Investigations team, it was challenging to shake off the work at the end of the day. Mr. Khavin said images of the riot would often appear in his dreams long after he stepped away from the computer.“You watch it so many times and look at these people and notice every detail and digest the anger,” he said. “It is difficult.” More