Public screenings of slasher movie ‘Winnie the Pooh’ are abruptly scrapped in Hong Kong
Public screenings of a slasher film starring Winnie the Pooh were abruptly scrapped in Hong Kong on Tuesday, sparking talk of increased censorship in the city.
Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment announced on Facebook that Thursday’s release of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” had been canceled with “great regret” in Hong Kong and neighboring Macau.
In an email response to The Associated Press, the distributor said it was told by theaters that they couldn’t show the film as planned, but didn’t know why. The affected movie chains did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For many locals, the Winnie the Pooh character is a playful taunt of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese censors had in the past briefly banned social media searches for the bear in the country. In 2018, the film “Christopher Robin”, also starring Winnie the Pooh, was reportedly denied a Chinese release.
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The film being filmed in Hong Kong has sparked concerns on social media about diminishing freedoms in the territory.
The film was originally slated to screen in around 30 cinemas in Hong Kong, VII Pillars Entertainment wrote last week.
An image from “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” is shown above. Public screenings of the film in Hong Kong have been cancelled. (ITN Studios/Jagged Edge Productions via AP)
The Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration said it had approved the film and the arrangements made by local cinemas to show the approved films “are a matter for the business decisions of the cinemas concerned”. He declined to comment on those arrangements.
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A screening originally scheduled for Tuesday evening in a cinema was canceled for “technical reasons”, the organizer said on Instagram.
Kenny Ng, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s film academy, declined to speculate on the reason for the cancellation, but suggested the mechanism for silencing critics appeared to resort to business decisions.
Hong Kong is a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997, promising to retain its Western-style freedoms. But China imposed a national security law following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, silencing or jailing many dissidents.
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In 2021, the government tightened guidelines and allowed censors to ban films suspected of breaking the sweeping law.
Ng said the city has seen more cases of censorship over the past two years, mostly targeting non-commercial films, such as independent shorts.
“When there is a red line, then there are more taboos,” he said.
Fox
