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      China's Weibo Suspends BTS, Blackpink and EXO Fan Accounts

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      Weibo accused one account devoted to a BTS member of illegal fund-raising amid a crackdown on 22 pages.HONG KONG — One month before the 26th birthday of Park Ji-min, a member of the South Korean boy band BTS, his fans in China pooled money to plaster his photographs and a declaration of their “eternal love” on the exterior of an airplane.As pictures of the customized Jeju Air plane circulated widely in China last week, Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, took notice. It accused the fan account of “illegal fund-raising,” and on Sunday, it banned the page from posting on the site for 60 days.The First in the world—Customized Exclusive Airplane in cooperation with Jeju AirPeriod: 9.1-11.30Flight Number: HL8087Note: The route may be changed due to some special reasons, please download Flightradar24 to check the flight information. pic.twitter.com/vp6AMpqjgd— PARKJIMINBAR👑 (@JIMINBAR_CHINA) September 1, 2021
      Weibo did not stop there. Hours later, the social media platform said that it would also suspend 21 other K-pop fan accounts for a month, including those that worship other BTS members; the girl group Blackpink; and EXO, a band with Chinese members, after receiving complaints.It was not immediately clear what social media crimes the fan accounts for Blackpink and EXO were deemed to have committed, but the move by Weibo came amid the backdrop of a broader government crackdown on celebrity worship and online fan culture in China.Beijing has recently taken steps to rein in fan clubs amid growing concern that the quest for online attention and celebrity adulation is poisoning the minds of the country’s youth.In its statement, Weibo said that stricter oversight of the fan groups would “purify” the online atmosphere and fulfill the platform’s responsibilities to society. It said that it would remove related blog posts that violated regulations and stressed that it “firmly opposes such irrational celebrity-chasing behavior and will deal with it seriously.”Weibo repeatedly cited a National Radio and Television Administration notice issued on Thursday for the need to manage the “chaos of fan clubs.” In the notice, the government regulator said it would ban broadcasts of “vulgar internet celebrities” and feminine-looking men. It stressed the importance of rectifying the “unlawful and immoral behavior” of celebrities and of upholding an industrywide standard of “loving the party and loving the country” in artistic creations.Representatives for BTS, Blackpink and EXO could not immediately be reached for comment. K-pop fans denounced Weibo’s action, calling it unwarranted and overly harsh.Agnes He, a university student in the southeastern Jiangsu Province of China, said that she believed it could help rein in fan behavior that had gone too far. But she also fretted about whether she could still buy albums at a discounted price through group purchases organized by the fan accounts.“I am quite sensible when chasing stars,” Ms. He said in a phone interview on Monday, adding that she saw pop idols as positive and energizing influences. “It’s a personal freedom. Just because I like Korean pop idols doesn’t mean I’m not patriotic.”K-pop fans around the world are known for their organizational prowess, with many decking out billboards, giant LED screens and public transportation vehicles to show support ahead of an album release or a favorite band member’s birthday. Some have turned to political activism, and others took credit for helping to inflate expectations for a rally in Oklahoma for Donald J. Trump, then the American president, by reserving tickets they had no intentions of using.But the online armies of Korean pop music fans are running up against President Xi Jinping’s sweeping agenda to clean up aspects of the entertainment industry in China. The Cyberspace Administration of China banned the ranking of celebrities by popularity. A regulator also accused an actress, Zheng Shuang, of tax evasion, fined her more than $46 million and ordered broadcasters to stop showing content in which she had appeared.BTS ran afoul of Chinese patriotic sentiment last year, when its leader, Kim Nam-joon, who performs under the stage name RM (formerly Rap Monster), made a seemingly innocuous remark about the shared suffering of Americans and Koreans during a ceremony commemorating the Korean War.Chinese internet users erupted in anger, questioning why he had not also recognized the sacrifices of the Chinese soldiers who had fought on the side of North Korea. To pre-empt a nationalistic backlash, multinational brands scrubbed references of their collaborations with BTS on their Chinese websites and social media accounts.This week, Chinese internet users both celebrated and criticized the suspension of the K-pop fan accounts. Some saw it as a necessary balm against idol worship and excessive spending on celebrities, even going as far as to call BTS an “anti-China group” and Korean pop music a form of “cultural invasion.”Dew Ding, a 24-year-old filmmaker in Beijing, was among those who supported the banning of the BTS singer’s fan account, saying that fans were overly incentivized to spend money in order to maintain an imaginary relationship with their idol.“This crowdfunding is getting more and more crazy, so I don’t think is a good thing,” she said.But Allen Huang, a Taipei-based D.J. who often writes about K-pop, said he did not believe that the ban would be effective in stopping fan accounts. To evade censorship and suspensions, many were rushing to hide their fund-raising campaigns, he said, sometimes by merely removing the word “fan page” from their accounts.“Chinese people will find ways to continue to support, whether that’s through non-Weibo fan clubs, silent fund-raising or just a rebranding of the idea of fan funding,” he said.Li You More

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      Mikis Theodorakis, Greek Composer and Marxist Rebel, Dies at 96

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      He waged a war of words and music against a military junta that banned his work and imprisoned him during its rule of Greece, from 1967 to 1974.Mikis Theodorakis, the renowned Greek composer and Marxist firebrand who waged a war of words and music against an infamous military junta that imprisoned and exiled him as a revolutionary and banned his work a half century ago, died on Thursday. He was 96.The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest, according to a statement on his website. News reports in Greece said he died at his home in central Athens.Mr. Theodorakis was best known internationally for his scores for the films “Zorba the Greek” (1964), in which Anthony Quinn starred as an essence of tumultuous Greek ethnicity; “Z” (1969), Costa-Gavras’s dark satire on the Greek junta; and “Serpico” (1973), Sidney Lumet’s thriller starring Al Pacino as a New York City cop who goes undercover to expose police corruption.Alan Bates, left, and Anthony Quinn in the title role in “Zorba the Greek,” for which Mr. Theodorakis wrote the music.Moviestore Collection Ltd./Alamy Stock PhotoIn the early 1970s, Greek exiles were fond of sharing a story about an Athens policeman who walks his beat humming a banned Theodorakis song. Hearing it, a passer-by stops the policeman and says, “Officer, I’m surprised that you are humming Theodorakis.” Whereupon the officer arrests the man on a charge of listening to Theodorakis’s music.Contradictions were a way of life in Greece in the era of a junta that repressed thousands of political opponents during its rule, from 1967 to 1974. But to many Greeks, Mr. Theodorakis (pronounced thay-uh-doe-RAHK-is) was a metronome of resistance. While he was put away for his ideals, his forbidden rebellious music was a reminder to his people of freedoms that had been lost.“Always I have lived with two sounds — one political, one musical,” Mr. Theodorakis told The New York Times in 1970.After he was released from prison into exile in 1968, he began an international campaign of concerts and contacts with world leaders that helped topple the regime in Athens four years later. It was a turning point for democracy, with a new constitution and a membership in the European Economic Community, which later became the European Union.Mr. Theodorakis arriving in France in 1968 after being freed from prison. He began an international campaign of concerts and contacts with world leaders that helped topple the regime in Athens. Associated PressAs Greece’s most illustrious composer, Mr. Theodorakis wrote symphonies, operas, ballets, film scores, music for the stage, marches for protests and songs without borders — an oeuvre of hundreds of classical and popular pieces that poured from his pen in good times and bad, even in the confines of drafty prison cells, squalid concentration camps and years of exile in a remote mountain hamlet.He also wrote anthems of wartime resistance and socialist tone poems about the plight of workers and oppressed peoples. His most famous work on political persecution was the haunting “Mauthausen Trilogy,” named for a World War II Nazi concentration camp used mainly to exterminate the intelligentsia of Europe’s conquered lands. It has been described as the most beautiful music ever written on the Holocaust.Mr. Theodorakis’s music made him a wealthy Communist. Having paid his dues to society, he did not apologize for his privileged life as a member of Parliament, with homes in Paris, Athens and the Greek Peloponnesus; for being feted at premieres of his work in New York, London and Berlin; or for counting cultural and political leaders in Europe, America and the Middle East as friends.During World War II, Mr. Theodorakis joined a Communist youth group that fought fascist occupation forces in Greece. After the war, his name appeared on a police list of wartime resisters, and he was rounded up with thousands of suspected Communists and sent for three years to the island of Makronisos, the site of a notorious prison camp. There he contracted tuberculosis, and he was tortured and subjected to mock executions by being buried alive.He studied at music conservatories in Athens and Paris in the 1950s, writing symphonies, chamber music, ballets and assorted rhapsodies, marches and adagios. He set to music the verses of eminent Greek poets, many of them Communists. He also deepened his ties to Communism: When Greece became a Cold War battleground, he blamed not Stalin but the C.I.A.Mr. Theodorakis was profoundly affected by the assassination in 1963 of Grigoris Lambrakis, a prominent antiwar activist who was run down by right-wing zealots on a motorcycle at a peace rally in Thessaloniki. His murder — a pivotal event in modern Greek history that was portrayed in thinly fictionalized form in the Costa-Gavras film as the work of leaders of the subsequent junta — provoked mass protests and a national political crisis.Mr. Theodorakis founded a youth organization in Mr. Lambrakis’s name that staged political protests across Greece and helped elect him to Parliament in 1964 on a ticket affiliated with the Communists.As Greece plunged into political and economic turmoil in 1967, Col. George Papadopoulos led a military coup that seized power, suspended civil liberties, abolished political parties and established special courts. Thousands of political opponents were imprisoned or exiled.Mr. Theodorakis, who had recently visited President Fidel Castro of Cuba, went into hiding. An arrest warrant was issued, and a military court sentenced him in absentia to five months in prison. Bans were decreed on playing, selling or even listening to his music.Months later, Mr. Theodorakis was arrested and jailed in Athens. He continued composing music in his cell. Five months later, Mr. Theodorakis, his wife and their two children were banished to Zatouna, a mountain village in the Peloponnesus, where they remained for three years.Mr. Theodorakis with his daughter, Margarita, his son, George, and his wife, Myrto, in 1968.Associated PressLeonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, Harry Belafonte and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich led calls for Mr. Theodorakis’s release, to no avail. For the last months of his detention in 1970, he was moved to a prison camp at Oropos, north of Athens. He was coughing up blood and running a fever. To stifle rumors that he had been beaten to death, the junta showed him to foreign reporters.The European government told Greece it was violating its treaty on human rights and called on the junta to end torture, release political prisoners and hold free elections. The colonels rejected the appeal, but they released Mr. Theodorakis and sent him and his family into exile in Paris, where he was hospitalized and treated for tuberculosis.Three months later, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in his triumphant “March of the Spirit.” The crowd’s emotions spilled over. “It was as if Zorba himself were conducting,” Newsweek wrote at the time. “When it ended, the audience wouldn’t let him leave; prolonged applause, cheers, stamping feet and rhythmic cries of ‘Theodorakis! Theodorakis!’ brought him back five times.”The concert began Mr. Theodorakis’s four-year campaign for a peaceful overthrow of the junta. Touring the world, he gave concerts on every continent to raise funds for the cause of Greek democracy. He won support from cultural and political leaders. In Chile, he met the country’s Marxist president, Salvador Allende, and the poet Pablo Neruda. He later composed movements to Neruda’s “Canto General,” his history of the New World from a Hispanic perspective.He was received by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and President François Mitterrand of France. The Swedish leader Olof Palme, the West German chancellor Willy Brandt and his old friend Melina Mercouri, the actress who had become the Greek minister of culture, pledged help. Artists and writers around the world became his allies.By 1973, facing international pressure and a restless civilian population, the junta’s hold was shaky. A student uprising in Athens escalated into open revolt. Hundreds of civilians were injured, some fatally, in clashes with troops. Colonel Papadopoulos was ousted, and martial law was imposed by a new hard-liner. In 1974, the junta collapsed when senior military officers withdrew their support.Within days, Mr. Theodorakis returned home in triumph, welcomed by large crowds, his music playing constantly on the radio. “My joy now is the same that I felt waiting in a cell to be tortured,” he said. “It was all part of the same struggle.”Former Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis also returned from exile and formed a national unity government. Greece’s monarchy was abolished, a new constitution was adopted and, in 1981, Greece joined the European Economic CommunityMichael George Theodorakis was born on the Aegean island of Chios on July 29, 1925, the older of two sons of Georgios and Aspasia (Poulakis) Theodorakis. He and his brother, Yannis, were raised in provincial cities. Their father was a lawyer. Their mother, an ethnic Greek from what is now Turkey, taught her sons Greek folk music and Byzantine liturgy.Yannis became a poet and songwriter. Mikis wrote his first songs without musical instruments and gave his first concert at 17.In 1953, he married Myrto Altinoglou. They had two children, Margarita and George. After his return from exile in 1974, Mr. Theodorakis resumed concert tours and became musical director of the symphony orchestra of Hellenic Radio and Television. He also returned to politics, serving in Parliament in the 1980s and ’90s.Mr. Theodorakis conducting the orchestra at the Herodes Atticus theater in Athens in 2005.Louisa Gouliamaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 1988, he quit the Communist Party and sided with conservatives who deplored scandals in the Andreas Papandreou government and bombings attributed to left-wing terrorists. But in 1992 he resigned as a conservative government minister and returned to the Socialists.Mr. Theodorakis, who was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1983, wrote books on music and political affairs, as well as a five-volume autobiography, “The Ways of the Archangel.” In retirement, he condemned America’s war in Iraq and Israel’s conservative policies. Even in his 80s, with his shaggy mane of gray and penetrating eyes, he had the ferocious look of a rebel or a prophet.In 1973, during his exile, Mr. Theodorakis presented a sweeping survey of his work at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, including a trilogy based on the poems of Neruda.“The elements behind Mr. Theodorakis’s music are simple enough,” John Rockwell wrote in a review for The Times: “stirring tunes, infectious dance rhythms and the ever‐present exotic color of the bouzoukis.” But while Mr. Theodorakis “makes brilliant, inventive use of his popular materials,” Mr. Rockwell noted, “he quickly transcends them.”“Ultimately, one can’t separate Mr. Theodorakis’s politics from his music,” he added. “One can easily understand why this is the sort of music some people feel they must ban.”Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting. More

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      in Theater

      Human Most of All: In Moscow, a Theater Stages ‘Gorbachev’

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      The Latvian director Alvis Hermanis’s bioplay is an ode to the love story of Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, and portrays the former leader in all his humanity.MOSCOW — In August 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow with his family from house arrest in Crimea after a K.G.B.-managed anti-democracy coup had failed to depose him.Instead of joining hundreds of thousands of ecstatic Muscovites, who had gathered on the city’s squares to celebrate his victory and theirs, Gorbachev went to a hospital with his wife, Raisa, who had suffered a stroke.This scene was pivotal for Russia’s recent history, and it is also central to “Gorbachev,” the latest hit production from the state Theater of Nations in Moscow, where despite the pandemic shows continued to be performed live, though at limited capacity.“I was not married to the country — Russia or the Soviet Union,” Gorbachev, who is now 90 and still lives in Moscow, wrote in his memoirs.“I was married to my wife, and that night I went with her to hospital,” his character, masterly played by Yevgeny Mironov, said from the stage. “Perhaps it was the most crucial decision of my political life.”“Gorbachev,” which premiered last October, is an ode to the love story of the Gorbachevs. By putting their relationship at its center, the play does something extraordinary for the Russian performing arts culture. It portrays the country’s leader as a human being instead of a grand demiurge, responsible for its future. It shows Gorbachev as someone for whom sentiments and moral obligations, to his wife, friends and citizens, reigned supreme over political expediency.In a country where autocrats, including the current one, carefully protect their image and personal life, “Gorbachev” is a breath of fresh air. It celebrates the humanity of a person who is almost universally celebrated as a liberator and equally despised by many in Russia as the butcher of the country’s superpower status.Alvis Hermanis, the acclaimed Latvian director who wrote and staged the play, tried to show how political matters appear secondary in the presence of true love. In the tradition of Russian classics, Hermanis makes the theme of love primary to historical events, which serve only as background. He makes the story universal, applicable not only to the leader of a vast nation but also to all of us.To achieve this result, Hermanis uses the tools of Russia’s psychological realism tradition. The only two actors onstage, Chulpan Khamatova as Raisa Gorbacheva and Mironov as the last Soviet president, play impeccably with eerie precision, creating an atmosphere of timelessness, and melancholia. Under Hermanis’s direction, the play’s pacing gives the viewer enough space to reflect on the characters.The whole production takes place in a dressing room with two makeup stations and two mirrors. There is a rack of dresses, and wigs are scattered around the space. This is a work in progress. A large sign on the entrance door reads: “Silence! Performance is ongoing.”Khamatova and Mironov enter in what could easily be their usual street clothes: a hoodie, jeans, an unpretentious black shirt. Over the course of the performance, they will transform onstage, change their attire and looks as they age.The two actors start by reading their lines out loud, discussing how to impersonate their characters. Slowly, through discussion, they adopt their roles, most visibly by imitating accents: Mikhail’s southern Cossack-derived pronunciation with elongated vowels and Raisa’s highly pitched chirping of an enthusiastic philosophy major in a country where the only accepted philosophical school was Marxism.Khamatova and Mironov, who are among the finest drama theater actors of their generation, leave the stage only once, for the intermission in this three-hour performance. Slowly and seamlessly, they read out and play out their lives: The story of Stalin’s purges is followed by the gruesome war with Germany. Then their lives get consumed by their university love affair and, finally, by Gorbachev’s rise to the top through the ranks of party nomenklatura.The story of Gorbachev at the helm of one of the world’s two superpowers is treated as background noise: “It was just one, six-year-long working day,” Raisa says from the stage. In the end, by the time the actors are already fully immersed in their characters, we only see a 90-year-old Mikhail. (At this point, Mironov is wearing a mask that covers his entire head, with Gorbachev’s port-wine birthmark on full display.) For the last few minutes, Mikhail is by himself, mourning his wife’s death in 1999 from leukemia, remembering her last words: “Do you remember if we returned the white shoes that we borrowed from Nina for our wedding?”The play’s success, and the insatiable demand for tickets that sell out in a half-hour and cost up to $250, can be attributed to the fact that its creators had something personal at stake.For Hermanis, Gorbachev, who liberated his native Latvia from the Soviet yoke, was the third person “who changed his life the most after his father and mother,” he said in an interview with a Russian state-run broadcaster.For Khamatova, Gorbachev gave hope for “a different life with the freedom of speech and sexual orientation,” she said in an interview with the Russian GQ.For Mironov, who, as manager of the Theater of Nations, turned it into Moscow’s premier cultural institution over the past decade, Gorbachev provided artistic freedom at the time when he was just starting his career in the late 1980s.“After getting into Gorbachev’s skin, I realized that he wasn’t a politician,” Mironov said in an interview recorded during rehearsals last year.“That’s why he did what he did — that’s why he is so interesting and valuable to me as a person,” he said. “Because he behaved like a human being.”The sense of care oozes through every pore of the acting and directing. That wouldn’t be enough, however, without the mastery that is also on full display here, which only testifies to the fact that it is time for Russian theater to cultivate more new territories, including the country’s most recent history.In that vein, the authors could have gone farther along their path. For instance, the production could have put more emphasis on the role of Raisa. The production could have been called Raisa, after all. With her independence and carefully crafted looks, she was among the most hated figures in late Soviet times. (My grandfather called her nothing but “rat” because her name rhymes with the word for rat in Russian.)It is time to do her justice.In the end, Gorbachev, who attended one of the final rehearsals, and stood up to a standing ovation from a box, did not ask for a single change.“This is freedom,” he said, according to Mironov. “Get used to it.”GorbachevAt the state Theater of Nations, Moscow; theatreofnations.ru. Running time: 3 hours. More

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      in Music

      Times Newsletters Director Announces Changes

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      A new portfolio from Opinion and the newsroom will expand our ambitions in an age-old medium.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Newsletters have a history even longer than newspapers, and email is several decades older than the web. Despite this lengthy pedigree, email newsletters are having a very buzzy moment — and here at The New York Times, we’re striving to bring even more depth, ambition and scale to our lineup.This summer marks 20 years since The Times published its first newsletters. We started off in 2001 covering technology, books and finance, among other topics. Some of those newsletters are still thriving, in various incarnations, as part of a portfolio that reaches some 15 million people every week — a number that has surged over the last two years. Flagships such as The Morning and DealBook serve as a destination for readers and a crucial gateway and guide to our journalism, while offering original reporting and analysis.As the editorial director of Times newsletters, I’ve been thinking with my colleagues about what comes next. How can we break new ground in the inbox and deliver sophisticated coverage of the topics that our readers care about most? Newsletters are already a core part of our subscriber experience: Nearly half of our subscribers engage with a newsletter every week. This week, we’re pulling back the curtain on a new kind of Times journalism: more than 15 newsletters that will be available only to our subscribers. The goal is to continue developing the inbox as a destination for our journalism, and to add value to a Times subscription.The first batch focuses on topics that our readers are passionate about, is staffed by journalists with deep expertise and features exciting, diverse new voices. It includes newsroom favorites Well, On Tech, At Home and Away, On Soccer and Watching, and columnists like Paul Krugman and Jamelle Bouie.It also features a new set of newsletters in Opinion (which remains a completely separate, independent entity, apart from our news operation):John McWhorter, a Columbia University linguist, will explore how race and language shape our politics and culture.Kara Swisher, host of the “Sway” podcast, will open her notebook to track the changing power dynamics in tech and media.Tressie McMillan Cottom, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will offer a sociologist’s perspective on culture, politics and the economics of our everyday lives.Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest, will reflect on matters of faith in private life and public discourse.Peter Coy, a veteran business and economics journalist, will use his decades of expertise to unpack the biggest headlines.Jay Caspian Kang, a wide-ranging cultural critic and New York Times Magazine contributor, will tackle thorny questions about politics, culture and the economy.Jane Coaston, host of “The Argument” podcast, will offer context to and analysis on the biggest debates in sports, politics and history.All of these subscriber-only newsletters represent a unique collection of talent and expertise in Opinion and the newsroom, assisted by editors, designers, developers, product managers and other specialists.We’ve spent most of the last year working toward this launch, and more new and revamped newsletters — including a new version of On Politics and a revamped Smarter Living focused on back-to-work issues — will join this initial batch in the coming months.You can subscribe to Times newsletters here. More

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      in Music

      Mirror, a Hong Kong Boy Band, Cheers the Gloomy Chinese City

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      The popularity of the group, called Mirror, has offered the city a rare burst of unity and pleasure after years of political upheaval.HONG KONG — They swarm public squares, crowd shopping malls and form lines that stretch several city blocks. They lean over barricades that strain to hold them and ignore police officers who try to corral them.The crowds filling Hong Kong in recent weeks aren’t protesters fighting for democracy. They are devotees of the city’s hottest boy band.For more than two years, Hong Kong has badly needed a source of uplift. First there were the mass protests of 2019, then the coronavirus pandemic, then a sweeping national security law. The city has been politically polarized and economically battered.Enter Mirror, a group of 12 singing and dancing young men who seemingly overnight have taken over the city — and, in doing so, infused it with a burst of joy.Their faces are plastered on billboards, buses and subway ads for everything from granola to air-conditioners to probiotic supplements. They have sold out concert halls, accounting for some of the city’s only large-scale events during the pandemic. Hardly a weekend goes by without one of the band’s (many) fan clubs devising a flashy new form of tribute: renting an enormous LED screen to celebrate one member, decking out a cruise ship for another.The whole city has been swept up in the craze — if not participating in the infatuation, then lamenting its ubiquity, as on a 300,000-member Facebook group called “My Wife Married Mirror and Left My Marriage In Ruins.”The group has sold out concert halls, accounting for some of the city’s only large-scale events during the pandemic.VCG, via Getty ImagesAs far as pop idols go, the band is familiar fare. Its lyrics hew to declarations of love and I-can-do-anything affirmations. K-pop’s influence is apparent in its tightly choreographed music videos and highly stylized coifs. Think BTS singing in Cantonese.Little about the group reflects the political upheaval in its hometown. But Mirror, perhaps precisely because it offers an escape with a catchy beat, has provided a musical balm to an anxious city at an uncertain time.“In the past two years, Hong Kong’s social environment has made many people, especially young people, feel very discouraged,” said Lim Wong, a 30-something finance worker as she lined up to take photographs by a fan-sponsored pink truck with the face of Anson Lo, a band member.“They work for their dreams, and that kind of energy really fits Hong Kong at this moment.”Though the group formed in 2018, through a reality show designed to manufacture a hit boy band, its popularity exploded this year. Fans cite a number of reasons: a strong showing at an awards show in January; the release of the group’s first full-length album; the pandemic, which left many Hong Kongers starved for entertainment.Mirror’s ascent has also coincided with a new, more intense stage of the Chinese government’s pressure on the city. For people of all political persuasions, the band has become a sort of ideological canvas.Some have claimed the band’s rousing beats for the battered pro-democracy movement. Gwyneth Ho, a 30-year-old opposition politician who was arrested after running in an informal primary election, has made her love for Mirror a motif in letters from jail. She said the first time she cried after her arrest was upon hearing “Warrior,” an anthem about perseverance.“The worst that could happen is death, and I won’t avoid it,” Ms. Ho quoted from the lyrics.Some also see Mirror as an emblem of Hong Kong identity, at a time when many fear that identity will be erased by Beijing.Cantopop — pop sung in Cantonese, the local Chinese language — was once a major cultural export. Unabashedly commercial but also distinctly local in character, it ranged from sappy power ballads to pulsing dance tunes, folding in covers of Western hits and nods to social issues.But interest flagged over the past two decades as the entertainment industries in South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China boomed. Many Hong Kong stars shifted their attention to the mainland.Now Mirror is driving a resurgence of enthusiasm for Cantopop — and, with it, a broader hometown pride.Gwyneth Ho, a pro-democracy politician, in her office a year ago. She has found comfort from the group’s songs in jail after her arrest earlier this year.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It’s because of Anson Lo and Mirror that I’ve become totally newly acquainted with Hong Kong local songs and artists,” said Henry Tong, a banker in his 20s visiting the pink truck. “It’s not just songs — there are also Hong Kong television shows and other productions.”The band has also become entangled in attacks by government supporters. On social media, some mainland users have, without evidence, accused members of supporting Hong Kong independence. A pro-Beijing lawmaker recently suggested that a television drama starring two band members might run afoul of the national security law because it depicted homosexuality. (The group’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)Other performers have become political targets. This month, officials arrested Anthony Wong Yiu-ming, a Cantopop star, for singing at a rally for a pro-democracy legislative candidate.Some fans have parsed the band’s statements for signs of political leanings, pointing to an interview one member gave saying he was glad “Warrior” could cheer up Ms. Ho, the politician.But Mirror has avoided explicit declarations. It has partnered with the Hong Kong government to promote the local economy.Even those who invoked politics in explaining Mirror’s popularity emphasized a fierce desire to insulate it from those forces.Fans of Mirror member Keung To at an event in Hong Kong last month. The most striking effect of the band’s takeover of Hong Kong has been its ability to unify a divided city. Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesAnnie Yuen, who leads the fan club that organized the Anson Lo truck — as well as the cruise ship, several billboards and the sale of thousands of “Little Anson” dolls — said Mirror was a rebuttal to those who had cast Hong Kong’s protesting youth as rioters or malcontents.“They were saying that Hong Kong youngsters have no contribution,” Ms. Yuen, who is in her 30s, said. Mirror showed that “Hong Kong young people could bring success.”Still, Ms. Yuen emphasized that was not her main draw to Mirror.“We want to just temporarily forget about the politics,” she said, “and just enjoy what they bring to us.”Enjoy is an understatement. Spend five minutes talking to a Mirror fan, and the takeaway is not about Hong Kong’s social situation. It’s of pure, wholesome delight.Mr. Lo, 26, is the heartthrob — but fans also moon over his work ethic and manners. Ian Chan, 28, is lovingly teased as a bookworm. Another member, Keung To, 22, won over many by discussing his experiences with childhood obesity and bullying.The band has leaned into its hometown hero image, promoting a food drive and cheering on Hong Kong’s Olympic athletes. In interviews, members exude family-friendly goofiness, talking over themselves and ruffling one another’s hair.Fans posing for photographs with cut-outs of Mr. Keung at an event for the anniversary of his fan club in Hong Kong last month.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesChristy Siu said she was enthralled by their singing, dancing and acting. She was especially proud of their performance at the January awards show, when the band, in sleek suits draped with silver chains, slinked and popped across the stage.Ms. Siu, who is in her 20s, said she spends around $250 each month on products advertised by band members. She recently bought dozens of Mirror-endorsed toothbrushes.In a way, the band is allowing young people to reclaim an innocence, said Anthony Fung, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies pop culture.“Suddenly, they’ve realized that they could put down all these so-called big social things,” he said. “There is something more joyful, playful, that draws them away from the political impasse of their youth.”The most striking effect of Mirror’s takeover of Hong Kong has been its ability to unify a divided city. Many fans said they wanted the band to reach as many listeners as possible, regardless of gender, age or political background.The band seems aware of those hopes. At the end of a sold-out concert series in May, the members lined up onstage to thank their parents and fans. A few offered advice.“This world is really complicated,” Mr. Chan said. “I hope that everyone here can remain simple and pure.”The crowd erupted. More

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      Dramatizing the Chernobyl Disaster, for Its Survivors

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      Unlike the recent HBO series, the Russian-language feature film “Chernobyl 1986,” now on Netflix, explores the human toll of the power plant explosion.CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — In April 1986, Alexander Rodnyansky was a young documentary filmmaker living in Kyiv. When the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded 60 miles north of the Ukrainian capital, most citizens of the Soviet Union were not informed. It took the government 18 days to share exactly what had happened, but Rodnyansky had been filming the disaster zone from the day after the catastrophe.What he witnessed in Chernobyl after the explosion — and the Soviet government’s bungled response to it — has obsessed him ever since.“It was probably one of the most important events of Soviet history and my own personal history,” Rodnyansky said in a telephone interview.Rodnyansky went on to become an award-winning director, producer and television executive. His career-long ambition to make a feature film about Chernobyl came to pass this year with the release of “Chernobyl 1986,” a historical drama that he was adamant should focus on the lives of the people, known as “liquidators,” who prevented the fire from spreading to the other reactors and thus avoided an even bigger disaster.An aerial view of the Chernobyl plant on April 26, 1986, showing damage from the explosion and fire.Volodymyr Repik/Associated Press“Chernobyl 1986” emphasizes the role of the individual, people’s personal heroism and dedication to a higher cause.Non-Stop ProductionThe film, which recently arrived on Netflix in the U.S., comes on the heels of the 2019 critically acclaimed HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” which critics praised for its focus on the failures of the Soviet system.“Chernobyl 1986,” which was partly funded by the Russian state, has received some criticism within Russia and Ukraine for not emphasizing the government missteps to the same extent. But Rodnyansky said that doing so was never his intention. When he watched the HBO series — twice — his film was already in production, and he wanted it to focus on the people directly affected by the disaster.“For years people spoke about what really happened there, especially after the Soviet Union broke up and the media were absolutely free,” Rodnyansky said, adding that most people understand that what had happened at Chernobyl was a failure of the Soviet system. Everyone involved in the disaster was a victim, he said — “they were hostages of that system.”Whereas the HBO approach was to dissect systemic flaws in the Soviet system that led to the disaster, the Russian film does something familiar to the country’s cultural tradition: emphasizing the role of the individual, people’s personal heroism and dedication to a higher cause.Before the disaster, Rodnyansky had been “living quite a stable life, and then something happened that made me think about the system which doesn’t allow people to know about the disaster that can kill hundreds of thousands — that is not a fair system,” he said, referring to the government’s silence immediately after the explosion.Thirty-five years later, Rodnyansky said it was clear that the Chernobyl explosion was one of the major events that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. It “changed the perception of life, the system and the country,” he said, making “many Ukrainians, if not the majority, think about the responsibility of Moscow and the need for Ukraine to be independent.”Today, the power plant site has fewer than 2,000 workers who maintain a giant sarcophagus placed over the site to ensure that no nuclear waste is released. This month, Ukraine will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union. The anniversary comes as the country tries to protect itself against Russia after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for separatist militants in Ukraine’s east.Although making this film had special resonance for Rodnyansky, he has taken on epic historical films before: He produced the 2013 movie “Stalingrad,” a love story set in the World War II battle of the same name, as well as “Leviathan,” which won best screenplay in Cannes in 2014.In 2015, he got the script for “Chernobyl 1986” and sent it to Danila Kozlovsky, a prominent director and actor who was then on the set of the film “Vikings.”The film’s Danila Kozlovsky, center, said that “it was important not to make just another pseudo-documentary feature film.” Non-Stop ProductionOlga (Oksana Akinshina) and Aleksei (Danila Kozlovsky) in “Chernobyl 1986.”Non-Stop ProductionKozlovsky, who was born the year before the nuclear disaster, was initially dismissive. But he said in a telephone interview that the more he read the script, “the more I understood that this was an incredible event that influenced the history of our country, which is still a rather complex topic.”In the film, he plays the protagonist, Aleksei, a firefighter and bon vivant. Upon encountering a former girlfriend in Pripyat, where most people working in the Chernobyl plant lived, Aleksei finds out that he has a 10-year-old son. Though he is interested in his son and ex-partner, he makes promises he doesn’t keep until he and his fellow firefighters are thrust into the horror and devastation of the explosion.“For me it was important not to make just another pseudo-documentary feature film,” the actor said, but to tell the story of “how this catastrophe burst into the life of an ordinary family.”Kozlovsky said he had spent a year meeting former liquidators and people displaced from the Chernobyl region to prepare for the role. In a sign of the political change in the former Soviet state since the disaster, Kozlovsky was unable to visit the protected 1,000-square-mile Chernobyl exclusion zone, where the reactors and the abandoned city of Pripyat are, he said, because Russian men of military age are restricted from entering Ukraine amid the countries’ ongoing conflict.The movie, which is dedicated to the liquidators, has struck a chord for some people who survived the efforts to prevent further explosions and then to clean up the radiation-affected area. An estimated 240,000 people were involved in the cleanup in 1986 and 1987, according to the World Health Organization.Oleg Ivanovich Genrikh was one of those people. He was working in the fourth reactor when it exploded, and today he regularly appears in documentaries and speaks to student groups to ensure that younger people understand the gravity of what happened.Now 62, he said he was pleased that the new Russian-made drama explored the disaster through the lens of the experience of one of the people to arrive at the catastrophe.Oleg Ivanovic Genrikh, who was working on the fourth reactor when it exploded, in front of the monument to “liquidators” in Chernobyl.“What is important is that the film shows the fate of a person who showed his love for and his dedication to his profession,” he said in a telephone interview, remembering the way he fought to contain the fires not only because of the environmental crisis that could result, but also because his wife and two young daughters were living nearby.“I know for sure that that night we did everything so that our city, which was three kilometers from our station, would be protected,” he said. “And we understood that our families, our loved ones, our children, were at risk.”Ivan Nechepurenko More

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      ‘What We Left Unfinished’ Review: Spectres of History

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      For her first feature documentary, Mariam Ghani dug up five unfinished movies from the Communist era in Afghanistan.In “What We Left Unfinished,” five movies started and then abandoned during Afghanistan’s Communist era, between 1978 and 1992, form a dazzling time capsule of the nation’s political and cultural history. The director Mariam Ghani — the daughter of Afghanistan’s current president, Ashraf Ghani — digs into the archives of Afghan Film, a state-run company that endured the whims and demands of various regimes before the Taliban destroyed most of its holdings in the 1990s.Culled from the remnants of the company’s collections, the films Ghani remixes in “What We Left Unfinished” bear the traces of successive political upheavals. “The April Revolution” (1978), for instance, was commissioned by Hafizullah Amin, who became Afghanistan’s president in a 1979 coup. When the Soviets assassinated him months later in a takeover, the film had to be shut down.
      In interviews, the filmmakers and actors involved in these movies recall their struggles with strict ideological dictates and censorship, but also the generous resources that propaganda-hungry governments lavished on them. The snippets we see are beautifully lit and produced — some feature big explosions and shootouts involving real soldiers wielding real Kalashnikovs.“What We Left Unfinished” doesn’t dwell too much on the nuts and bolts of the making of these films, which is a pity, because they offer tantalizing glimpses into a cinematic culture whose formal ambitions seem to have been unstinted — and perhaps even encouraged — by political pressures. But Ghani’s mode is less interrogative than associative. Her montage of film fragments illustrates and sometimes poetically belies the interviewees’ recollections, evoking the ambiguous and unresolved contours of collective memory.What We Left UnfinishedNot rated. In English and Dari, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 11 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      New York City Awards $3 Million for Latino and Puerto Rican Theater

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      The Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater will use the funds, along with $7 million from the city over the last eight years, for an expanded South Bronx space.The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs announced on Friday that the city had awarded $3 million to Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, which champions Puerto Rican and Latino artists and produces original bilingual plays and musicals.The new funding, provided by the mayor, the City Council and the Bronx borough president, is in addition to about $7 million from the Department of Cultural Affairs already devoted to the theater company in the last eight years — bringing the total to $10.2 million. The funds will be used to build a new cultural and administrative headquarters in the South Bronx.“Arts and culture will be at the heart of this city’s recovery,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “And this theater will give young Bronxites more opportunities than ever to build a more inclusive cultural future for our city.”An addition to one of the company’s existing theaters, on Walton Avenue between 149th and 150th Streets, will serve as the headquarters for the organization. (The theater also has a space in Midtown and shows will continue to be produced at both locations.) The expanded space will allow for more education and other programming, said Rosalba Rolón, the founding artistic director of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.“I can’t tell you the excitement our neighbors have,” Rolón said in an interview on Friday. “This is the kind of service Bronx artists need. The community might be able to use the space in other ways as well, for town halls and community meetings.”A large portion of the building, in the Mott Haven neighborhood, will also be used for pre-professional training for performing artists, she said.The project, which is the organization’s first major capital one since its theater in the Bronx opened in 2005, had been in the works for eight years. The $3 million in new city support added as part of the budget for fiscal year 2022 put the project over its finish line. It does not yet have a target opening date.Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater was created in 2014 in a merger of the Pregones Theater in the Bronx and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in Manhattan. The Pregones was founded in 1979 by a group of artists led by Rolón to create new works in the style of Caribbean and Latin American “colectivos” or performing ensembles. The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater was founded in 1967 as one of the first U.S. bilingual theater companies.For a theater that has nurtured the development of Latino artists and long been invested in community engagement in Mott Haven, the new home is an exciting next step.“It is meaningful that we come to full funding at the exact same time when New Yorkers are taking bold steps toward recovery from pandemic, and when enduring inequities in arts funding are an ongoing conversation,” Arnaldo J. López, the organization’s managing director, said in a statement. More