A Film Is Stopped
Viewers interested in modern cinema often explore A Film Is Stopped because of its cast, story direction, and audience popularity.
The one directorial feature by Ning Dai, sister of 5th generation filmmaker Ning Ying and wife of 6th generation filmmaker Zhang Yuan. It follows a chaotic period in November of 1993, when production suddenly halted on Zhang Yuan's TV film adaptation of a popular novel, Chicken Feathers, after the Chinese Film Bureau announced that Zhang could no longer direct the film due to submitting his previous independent feature, 1992's Beijing Bastards, to a film festival in Japan without receiving the proper authorization to do so. Ning's documentary features anguished meetings between the Chicken Feather's production crew as they debate replacing Zhang with another director, along with testimonials on the state of censorship in Chinese independent cinema of the early '90s from Wu Wenguang, Tang Danian, He Jianjun, Cui Jian, and others.
