A Chinese artist has been fined for “illegal filming” of folk music in Xinjiang – even as China promotes state-sponsored performances of Uyghur singers and dancers in Europe that have angered Uyghur activists.
The Chinese artist, Guo Zhenming, who is known for his work commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, told Radio Free Asia he was fined 75,000 yuan (US$10,300) and had all his equipment and materials confiscated over what he said was just a personal project not a film for distribution.
In one of the videos, there is a Uyghur girl playing a traditional stringed musical instrument known as a tambur. “This is one piece of evidence used by the Cultural and Tourism Bureau to accuse me,” Guo told RFA Mandarin.
The Urumqi Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism in Xinjiang, which held a hearing in Guo’s case last week, said the Yunnan-based film director and dissident artist had violated Article 13 of the ‘Film Industry Promotion Law’ that requires “legal persons and other organizations that intend to produce films” to send a screenplay synopsis to the relevant departments to be filed for their records.
But Guo told RFA in an interview Wednesday that his filming of folk music in cities and villages across Xinjiang in December 2024 and January 2025 was not intended for commercial use, and he had not scripted a film.
Instead, it is a personal art project with contemporary Chinese musician Wang Xiao to create and collect folk music while traveling and filming the landscape of Xinjiang, he said.
“The current shoot in Xinjiang is just a record of artistic music-collection field trips. I never said I would make a movie. There is no studio or trailer, only some filming equipment and materials,” Guo said.
The Urumqi Culture and Tourism Bureau reasoned he was likely to turn the footage shot in Xinjiang into a film as he had previously screened a documentary – which was about artists haunted by the Tiananmen Square massacre – at the Berlin Film Festival in Germany, even though he had not obtained official permission to release that film.
In February, Urumqi authorities had raided Guo’s house and seized all his equipment, including two cameras, one hard drive, two filters, a set of lights, and a recorder.
Chinese netizens and artists have criticized the punishment against Guo as government’s suppression of artistic freedom and ‘high-seas fishing,’ a term used in legal circles to describe cross-provincial policing beyond a particular office’s jurisdiction.
