- What surprises me is that this society, which is developing at such a rapid rate today, still has the most barbaric and backward legal system. I think it's a bad omen.
- The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality, basic human rights, freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.
- On June 22 [2012], the end date of my one year period of probation, the police told me, 'Your case is closed. You're a free man. We have nothing to charge you with because you behaved very well this year', which I admit was a surprise. I think I violated very rule they set, but you can see their attitude was to be finished. Maybe it became clear to them that we are not an agent of any foreign interest group that wanted to subvert state power.
- For me, I think the most important freedom is to think freely. That is essential for a human being and also a very basic right that everybody should have. It doesn't matter what country or what political system you live in. In China we are far behind. We don't have the very basic right to vote, we have no way to express ourselves through media. We cannot really participate in any kind of political discussions or show our opinions to influence any social-political decision-making. That means we don't have very essential conditions for individuals or citizens to be free.
- There is no outdoor sport as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.
- When I was arrested, the guards would often ask me to sing songs, but because I wasn't familiar with music, I was embarrassed. All I could sing was Chinese People's Liberation Army songs.
- [why his segment from the anthology film Berlin, I Love You (2019) was cut from the final version] The film has faced tremendous difficulties with regard to financing and distribution. During the promotion and sale of the film, the producer told us he had never faced such strong pushback on any previous film he had made than as he had from my participation in this film. People clearly told him that my involvement would be a problem for them to get financial support or distribution. It could even cause problems for future films, such as the next planned film Shanghai, I Love You. This comes as no surprise; China's influence in the cultural realm is beyond my imagination. [Screendaily, March 2019]
- [why Yimou Zhang's One Second (2020) and Derek Tsang's Better Days (2019) were withdrawn from the Berlinale] I grew up in China and have many filmmaker friends. Zhang Yimou was my classmate. This is not the first Zhang Yimou film to be censored. To Live (1994), his best film, never had the opportunity to screen in front of a Chinese audience. It was shown at a foreign film festival and he was punished by not being allowed to make films for years. Today, to show your film at a foreign film festival without special permission could cause a lifetime ban on making films in China, or it could even be seen as a criminal act. All the filmmakers I know have told me that even though they have faced censorship throughout their lives, they have never faced a more severe time as today. [Screendaily, March 2019]
- [on Chinese censorship and soft power] To be a so-called Chinese filmmaker within China is a joke. Every single line of text, every frame, is heavily censored by the strongest censorship machine of the 21st century. And everyday it becomes stronger in controlling people's ideologies and twisting the information, promoting a pure entertainment devoid of profound aesthetic or philosophical content. The Communist Party has successfully done this for 70 years. It still controls every single film that comes out of China. All the major Western film festivals willingly or unwillingly, consciously or subconsciously, accept the authority of that dictatorship. Self-censorship has been clearly exercised not only by Chinese filmmakers but also by the West. The entire film industry is eager for box office success in mainland China. China does not only invest in Hollywood or the entertainment industry globally, but also uses its market to reward or punish whoever agrees or disagrees with their ideology. For the Communist Party, culture has been used as soft power, which is as powerful as any weapon on the international political and economic battlefield. [Screendaily, March 2019]
- [on his future filmmaking plans] Film is a different way of creating and communicating, and I really enjoy it. Human Flow and The Rest have been shown in the Western film market which has its own structure. There is so much I still have to learn. At this time, we are at work on three other films. One is related to the Rohingya refugees. Another is on the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico and the impunity of that society. The third is about human-animal relations throughout history. The first two films will be done this year; the third film will take a while longer. [Screendaily, March 2019]
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