The premiere of an epic Chinese war movie has been cancelled a week before its scheduled release, in what appears to be a new round of tightening of ideological control in the country. A terse one-sentence statement on the official microblog of the film The Eight Hundred this week announced that the film’s 5 July premiere will be cancelled and “a new release date will be announced later”.
The film had already been pulled the day before its opening-night premiere at the prestigious Shanghai International Film Festival earlier this month, apparently because it glorifies the second world war heroism of the Communists’ rival Nationalist party, according to Chinese-language media reports. The ruling Nationalist party fought alongside the Communists against Japan during the second world war, but retreated to Taiwan after it lost the Chinese civil war in 1949.
The film had already been pulled the day before its opening-night premiere at the prestigious Shanghai International Film Festival earlier this month, apparently because it glorifies the second world war heroism of the Communists’ rival Nationalist party, according to Chinese-language media reports. The ruling Nationalist party fought alongside the Communists against Japan during the second world war, but retreated to Taiwan after it lost the Chinese civil war in 1949.
