Recently banned Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye (Suzhou River, Purple Butterfly) will be able to take a little solace in the fact that Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan) - the film which caused the unfairly harsh 5 year ban - won the Golden Durian at the 9th Annual Barcelona Asian Film Festival last week. The film follows the events of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests intertwined with a tale of romance, leading up to the day’s tragic and brutal conclusion - hardly a subject which the Chinese censors would approve of, hence Ye’s inclination to submit the film to festivals without approval. It’s nice to see the film getting recognition anyway, especially since the Chinese authorities alleged it was banned because of “insufficient sound and image quality”…erm…sure.

Source: Variety Asia