Hong Kong cinemas won’t show Occupy documentary, filmmaker fears

Raise The Umbrellas director Evans Chan says city cinemas worry how Beijing will react after state-run media’s criticism of dystopian Ten Years, but insists he is neutral and sought to make film even-handed

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Protesters in a still from Evans Chan’s documentary Raise the Umbrellas. Photo: P. H. Yang

Published: 12:45pm, 24 Nov 2016Updated: 1:03pm, 24 Nov 2016

The director of a documentary about Hong Kong’s 2014 “umbrella movement” protests fears it will be hard for his film and others like it to secure a commercial release in the city because cinema operators worry how Beijing will react.

“No one will want to screen it commercially because of Ten Years ,” says Evans Chan of his film Raise The Umbrellas, referring to the independent film imagining a dystopian Hong Kong in 2025 that was a hit when it went on limited release in 2015 but was dropped by cinemas after Chinese state media criticised it. “All theatres are scared by this film, even a film festival [in Hong Kong].”

Chan, who was speaking on Wednesday evening at an informal media preview of his film, has already seen a screening cancelled by the Asia Society Hong Kong.

In its 117 minutes, Raise The Umbrellas chronicles the unfolding of the 79-day street occupations in autumn 2014, how they spawned the localist movement in Hong Kong and the recent Legislative Council election. It includes footage from prominent protest supporter Denise Ho Wan-sze’s outdoor “freedom” concert in Tai Ping Shan this summer.