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      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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      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

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      China’s Communist Party Turns 100. Cue the (State-Approved) Music.

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      A wave of nationalistic music, theater and dance is sweeping China, part of Beijing’s efforts to improve the party’s image and strengthen political loyalty.Yan Shengmin, a Chinese tenor, is known for bouncy renditions of Broadway tunes and soulful performances in operas like “Carmen.”But lately, Mr. Yan has been focusing on a different genre. He is a star of “Red Boat,” a patriotic opera written to celebrate the 100th anniversary this week of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Yan has embraced the role, immersing himself in party history and binge-watching television shows about revolutionary heroes to prepare.“I feel a lot of pressure,” Mr. Yan said in an interview between rehearsals. “The 100th anniversary is a big occasion.”A wave of nationalistic music, theater and dance is sweeping China as the Communist Party works to ensure its centennial is met with pomp and fanfare.Prominent choreographers are staging ballets about revolutionary martyrs. Theaters are reviving nationalistic plays about class struggle. Hip-hop artists are writing songs about the party’s achievements. Orchestras are performing works honoring communist milestones like the Long March, with chorus members dressed in light-blue military uniforms.The celebrations are part of efforts by Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian leader, to make the party omnipresent in people’s lives and to strengthen political loyalty among artists.Mr. Xi, who has presided over a broad crackdown on free expression in China since rising to power nearly a decade ago, has said artists should serve the cause of socialism rather than become “slaves” of the market.In honor of the party’s centennial, Mr. Xi’s government has announced plans for performances of 300 operas, ballets, plays, musical compositions and other works. The list includes classics like “The White-Haired Girl,” a Mao-era opera about a young peasant woman whose family is persecuted by a cruel landlord. There are also new productions like “Red Boat,” which chronicles the party’s first congress in 1921 on a boat outside Shanghai.Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has said that artists should serve the cause of socialism.Xinhua, via Associated PressThe outpouring of artistic expression comes amid rising nationalism in China. Many artists have little choice but to comply with the government’s demands for more patriotic art, with officials in China’s top-down system wielding considerable influence over decisions about financing and programming.“It has become very important for artists to follow the political line,” said Jindong Cai, director of the U.S.-China Music Institute at Bard College. “The government wants artists to focus on Chinese works that relate to people’s lives and positively reflect China’s image.”Critics have denounced the so-called “red” works as propaganda. But Chinese artists say that is partly the point.“China is very strong now and people should respect that,” said Warren Mok, a Chinese tenor who is embarking on a national tour to celebrate the centennial.Mr. Mok said he hoped to use music to remind people about the party’s success in improving living standards in China. Still, he said it was important that patriotic works are balanced with Western music and other art forms.“Anything you do should not be too extreme,” he said. “If you’re so insecure about your own culture, your own nationalism, you close your door. Isolation is not good for any country.”Hundreds of performances related to the party’s centennial have already taken place, and scores more are expected by year’s end.In Suzhou, a city west of Shanghai, the choreographer Wang Yabin recently staged “My Name is Ding Xiang,” a new ballet about a 22-year-old martyr who died during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In Nanjing, an eastern city, an orchestra recently performed “Liberation: 1949,” a symphony about the Communist revolution by the composer Zhao Jiping.Some works deal with contemporary themes, including the party’s efforts to eliminate extreme poverty and its success in fighting the coronavirus, which Mr. Xi has held up as evidence of the superiority of China’s authoritarian model. A play called “People First” depicts the heroism of medical workers in Wuhan, where the coronavirus emerged in late 2019.By reviving older works, Mr. Xi appears eager to remind the public of the party’s glory days.Kevin Frayer/Getty ImagesPropaganda art has a long history in China, and some of the country’s most celebrated works emerged during periods of intense political control, including the decade of bloody upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s known as the Cultural Revolution. During that time, classical music was attacked as decadent and bourgeois, and many Western composers and instruments were banned.In modern China, music and dance from the Cultural Revolution still resonates with the public, including works such as the “Yellow River Piano Concerto” and “The Red Detachment of Women,” a revolutionary ballet.“These cultural products have their own artistic value,” said Denise Ho, assistant professor of history at Yale University who studies 20th century history in China. “For many Chinese, there is a nostalgia for certain aspects of the Mao era.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}By reviving older works, Mr. Xi appears eager to remind the public of the party’s glory days. His government has redoubled efforts to fortify ideological loyalty among artists. This year, a government-backed industry association released a moral code for performing artists — dancers, musicians and acrobats included — calling on them to be faithful to the party and help advance the socialist cause.Mr. Xi, in a ceremony this week at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, handed out centennial medals to 29 party cadres, including Lan Tianye, an actor often described as a “red artist,” and Lu Qiming, a patriotic composer known for the piece “Ode to the Red Flag.”“For Xi, as for Mao, art is first and foremost a political instrument,” Professor Ho said.The Chinese government has tried to use music, dance, television and movies in recent years to improve its image, especially among young people, many of whom have no direct connection to the Communist revolution of 1949.A rap song celebrating the centennial, titled “100 Percent,” has been widely shared on the Chinese internet in recent days. But the 15-minute track, featuring 100 artists, has been mocked for its wooden propaganda slogans.“Our spaceships are flying in the sky,” says one lyric. “The new China must get lit.”Performers say they hope the high caliber of the centennial productions, including elaborate costumes, sets and visual effects, will appeal to younger audiences.A gala performance about the Long March. Some of the country’s most celebrated works emerged during periods of intense political control.Ng Han Guan/Associated PressWang Jiajun, 36, a principal dancer at Shanghai Dance Theater who plays a martyr in a revival of the dance production “The Eternal Wave,” said young people could identify with the work.“These heroes were only in their teens, 20s or 30s when they lost their lives,” Mr. Wang said. “The stories of young people will attract young people.”For artists taking part in the centenary, the effort has at times been laborious.Xie Menghao, a Chinese-born graduate student in music composition in Germany, spent six months repurposing a suite of Red Army songs into a piano concerto about the Long March, a 6,000-mile retreat of Communist forces that began in 1934 and established Mao’s pre-eminence. He said he was proud of the piece, which the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra premiered last month, but added that the experience was “more like a job.”“I just did what they said,” he said in an interview. “Every composer just thinks about the music.”Mr. Yan the tenor starring in “Red Boat,” said he has found it easy to connect with his character, Chen Duxiu, a founder of the party. But he said rehearsals have not always been easy. Younger performers, for instance, have needed help better understanding the emotional experience of being part of the early communist struggle, he said.“They don’t have the ideas to fight or sacrifice for the nation’s destiny,” Mr. Yan, 56, said. “I can do it in one take.”Mr. Yan said he was confident that the show would have success in China and perhaps beyond.“We’re depicting history, not just lecturing how great the Communist Party is,” he said. “This isn’t a communist slogan-type performance. It’s plain storytelling.”Javier C. Hernández reported from Taipei, Taiwan, and Joy Dong from Hong Kong. More

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      Hong Kong to Censor Films Under China’s Security Law

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      The city’s government said it would block the distribution of films that are deemed to undermine national security, bringing the territory more in line with mainland Chinese censorship.For decades, Hong Kong’s movie industry has enthralled global audiences with balletic shoot-em-ups, epic martial-arts fantasies, chopsocky comedies and shadow-drenched romances. Now, under orders from Beijing, local officials will scrutinize such works with an eye toward safeguarding the People’s Republic of China.The city’s government on Friday said it would begin blocking the distribution of films that are deemed to undermine national security, marking the official arrival of mainland Chinese-style censorship in one of Asia’s most celebrated filmmaking hubs.The new guidelines, which apply to both domestically produced and foreign films, are the latest sign of how thoroughly Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory, is being reshaped by a security law enacted last year to quash antigovernment protests.With the blessing of the Communist government in Beijing, the Hong Kong authorities have changed school curriculums, pulled books off library shelves and moved to overhaul elections. The police have arrested pro-democracy activists and politicians as well as a high-profile newspaper publisher.And in the arts, the law has created an atmosphere of fear.The updated rules announced Friday require Hong Kong censors considering a film for distribution to look out not only for violent, sexual and vulgar content, but also for how the film portrays acts “which may amount to an offense endangering national security.”Anything that is “objectively and reasonably capable of being perceived as endorsing, supporting, promoting, glorifying, encouraging or inciting” such acts is potential grounds for deeming a film unfit for exhibition, the rules now say.The new rules do not limit the scope of a censor’s verdict to a film’s content alone.“When considering the effect of the film as a whole and its likely effect on the persons likely to view the film,” the guidelines say, “the censor should have regard to the duties to prevent and suppress act or activity endangering national security.”A Hong Kong government statement on Friday said: “The film censorship regulatory framework is built on the premise of a balance between protection of individual rights and freedoms on the one hand, and the protection of legitimate societal interests on the other.”The vagueness of the new provisions is in keeping with what the security law’s critics say are its ambiguously defined offenses, which give the authorities wide latitude to target activists and critics.Supporters of pro-democracy activists who have been charged under the national security law protested in Hong Kong last month.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“How do you raise funds?” asked Evans Chan, a filmmaker who has faced problems screening his work in Hong Kong. “Can you openly crowdsource and say that this is a film about certain points of view, certain activities?”Even feature filmmakers, he said, will be left to wonder whether their movies will fall afoul of the new law. “It’s not just a matter of activist filmmaking or political filmmaking, but the overall scene of filmmaking in Hong Kong.”At its peak during the decades after World War II, the city’s film industry enjoyed huge influence across the moviegoing world, churning out popular genre flicks and nurturing auteurs like Wong Kar-wai and Ann Hui. The influence of Hong Kong cinema can be seen in the work of Hollywood directors including Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, and in blockbusters such as “The Matrix.”More recently, Hong Kong’s political turmoil has been of intense interest to artists and documentarians, even if their work has sometimes struggled to be shown before audiences.A screening of a documentary about the 2019 protests was canceled at the last minute this year after a pro-Beijing newspaper accused the film of encouraging subversion. The University of Hong Kong urged its student union to cancel a showing of a film about a jailed activist.The screening went on as planned. But a few months later, the university said it would stop collecting membership fees on the organization’s behalf and would stop managing its finances as punishment for its “radical acts.” More

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      ‘Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue’ Review: China Through Writers’ Eyes

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      Jia Zhangke’s documentary illuminates a vast and complicated history in a series of intimate conversations.The films of Jia Zhangke, documentary and fictional, zoom in on the granular details of individual lives. At the same time, they are chapters in the single, unimaginably complicated story of China’s transformation in the decades since the 1949 revolution. Jia, who was born in 1970, tends to dwell in the recent past, and to circle back to Shanxi, the part of northern China where he grew up, but he’s also attentive to the continuities of history and geography, the connections between generations and places.His latest documentary, “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue,” is intimate and specific, consisting mainly of interviews with three writers — Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong — associated with Shanxi. They reminisce about their families and careers, and also about their sometimes wrenching, sometimes exhilarating experiences during the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution in the ’60s and ’70s, and later periods of urbanization and capitalist expansion. Colleagues, neighbors and family members, listed as “witnesses” in the end credits, contribute their own anecdotes and insights. The movie is an affecting group portrait and also a complex and subtle piece of literary criticism.Watching it, I wished I was more familiar with the work of its subjects. Some of it has been translated into English, notably Jia Pingwa’s “Ruined City” and Yu’s “To Live,” which was the basis for Zhang Yimou’s acclaimed 1994 film. But Jia Zhangke’s patient listening and the elegant clarity of the movie’s structure — it advances in roughly chronological order, divided into short sections that explain where it’s going — make it accessible to the curious as well as illuminating to the already knowledgeable.More than that, “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue” demystifies historical episodes that are often presented, at least in the West, as abstractions, and personalizes large-scale events. Politics hovers over the writers’ lives, but their sense of national and regional history is filtered through work, family and landscape. Jia Pingwa recalls the hardship that his father, a teacher, suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Yu talks about his career transition from dentist to novelist. Liang delves into painful recollections of her mother’s illness and her sister’s marriage. Between the lines of their conversations with the unseen director you can intuit the elusive larger story — about the evolution of a poor, rural corner of an emerging global superpower — that is both his subject and theirs.Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns BlueNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More