Hong Kong Documentary Pulled Hours Before Screening
The Anita Chan Lai Ling Building of Hong Kong Polytechnic University was the site of the most violent protests of the 2019 wave and the subject of Inside the Red Brick Wall. (See-ming Lee)
The Hong Kong Film Critics Society canceled the screening of Inside the Red Brick Wall a few hours before its premiere on March 15. The 2020 documentary film centers around the struggle between protesters and police at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) during the city’s 2019 wave of anti-government protests. Officials canceled the screening due to concerns about its potential violation of the recently imposed Hong Kong National Security Law.
Named after the characteristic red brick walls of the university, the documentary depicts the two-week siege during which armed riot police clashed with thousands of anti-government protesters inside the campus. The standoff stands as one of the most violent in the city’s history; protesters laid down roadblocks and threw firebombs at the police, who responded with tear gas, water cannons, and other non-lethal weapons. In the end, police made more than 400 arrests, and local hospitals received up to 200 injured protesters who needed medical care.
The 88-minute documentary, produced under the pseudonym HK Documentary Filmmakers, chronicles the entirety of the siege with a focus on the harrowing experience of the protesters. It won the best editing award from the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Europe's largest documentary film festival.
The film, however, did not receive universal acclaim. Hong Kong’s Office for Film, Newspaper, and Article Administration gave the documentary the rating of Category III adults-only, barring those under 18 from viewing it. It also required that distributors add a warning to the film saying that the content it records “may constitute criminal offenses” could be “unsubstantiated or misleading.”
Jacky Ko Chung-kit, a former member of the OFNAA, said that he did not consider the film as a documentary because “most of its content focuses on the scenes of police enforcement with a lack of objectivity, and it lacks scenes of rioters’ violent behavior, so the facts shown in the film are not integrated.” The Global Times, moreover, reported that certain Chinese netizens demanded that the film be banned, expressing their discontent with its “distortion of black and white [realities]” and its “blatant incitement of violence.”
Pro-Beijing newspapers Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, in the week prior to the film’s scheduled screening, published a series of articles alleging that its production crew had associated with protesters. Questioning also surfaced regarding the documentary’s potential violation of the national security law imposed in June 2020—which bans acts of subversion, secession, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces.
Tenky Tin Kai-man, chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, an organization established in 2002 “to uphold and safeguard the rights and interests of Hong Kong filmmakers and improve the film production environment in Hong Kong,” voiced his concerns: “I could not say if the cinemas had been under political pressure. But if they have pulled the film out of non-commercial reasons because of external pressure, it would be a worrying sign.”