CENSORED CHINESE FILM HITS PIRATE SITES

Jia Zhangke’s award-winning film A Touch of Sin, which has received much critical acclaim abroad but which has not gotten past Chinese censors at home, now faces a new threat from within the country — piracy. An early version of the movie has turned up on pirate sites, and it’s being downloaded by the thousands. In a posting on China Weibo, — a kind of Twitter web service — the director wrote, “I apologize to my investment partners for losing the Chinese mainland market. My own company will bear the financial responsibility.” While the government has given Jia permission to screen the film at festivals and such (it won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival last May and won the top prize at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival in October), it has not given him permission to screen it in North America.