This account of censorship by F el-Manssoury, published in Index on Censorship magazine in 1981 in Libya is based on first-hand knowledge of the early years of President Gaddafi’s regime
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Members of the Russian artist group VOINA were arrested yesterday. Russian police, allegedly posing as German television journalists, arrested and detained Natalia Sokol along with her two-year-old son overnight at a police station in Moscow. Sokol’s requests to speak to her lawyer were rejected. On the same night, plain clothes police tried to break into the apartment of another VOINA member, Leonid Nikolayev. Only weeks ago, all charges against the group were dropped by an investigations committee. Read more about the political street art that has taken Russia by storm in the latest issue of the magazine, The Art Issue, which explores censorship in the contemporary art world.
Independent film festivals around the world are usually bustling affairs. This was not so in the case of the Sixth Beijing Independent Film Festival.
The week-long event, scheduled to start last weekend, dampened down all its advertising for fear of being banned (not uncommon in China). The 120-odd films, including a showcase from Africa, do not have the government’s seal of approval for public exhibition and thus, if the event if big enough, is likely to incur the wrath of the authorities. The exact venue was kept secret until the opening day. A close friend of a director told me about it. When I asked if he was going he replied: “I’m not even sure it’s going to take place. They’re not even not sure it’s going to take place. It’s supposed to be in Songzhuang [an art district at the far fringes of Beijing’s eastern suburbs]. They’re not allowed to have a website or any promotion. It’s ridiculous. I heard they’ll only send round a text on the day to say if they can hold it so I’m not sure.”
As it turned out they did hold it. TIME magazine’s Austin Ramzy was there. Here’s what happened in Ramzy’s words:
The opening was held outside because the police forced at least two changes of venue, first from a local arts center and then from a hotel
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Then the cops arrived. A local official walked into one of the makeshift theatres and demanded, ‘What are you doing here? What are you watching?’ The audience didn’t respond. Outside in the courtyard about a dozen police officers milled around, demanding identification from attendees…
The cops didn’t shut down the event, but they tried their hardest to make it clear that everyone was being watched and should probably just go home.
A big of Googling, and I found the original poster for the event which comically morphs a roll of film into a roll of toilet paper, no doubt an ironic reflection on some level of how the authorities view the festival’s illegitimate films.
Thousands of demonstrators took part in an anti-censorship march in the Tunisian capital on Sunday. As the debate between Islamic conservatives and secularists continues in the country, the liberal demonstrators gathered for the march, dubbed “Aataqni” or “set me free” in Tunisian Arabic. The movement follows opposing protests last week, after the decision by Nessma TV to air the film Persepolis. The demonstrators at the Aataqni protest were alarmed by the reaction of the Islamists to the animated film, claiming if that kind of censorship was accepted, it could lead to censorship of other programs.