China imposes 5-year ban on film maker Lou Ye

BEIJING, Sept 4 (Reuters) China has banned director Lou Ye from making movies for the next five years after he submitted ''Summer Palace'' to the Cannes Film Festival without official approval, state media reported today.

Lou did not clear the film, a romance set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that also features explicit sex scenes, with China's state censors before going to Cannes in May.

''A senior official with SARFT (the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television) confirmed the punishment to Xinhua on Monday but refused to discuss the case further,'' the official state news agency reported.

Calls from Reuters to SARFT's film bureau went unanswered. An official at SARFT's general office declined to comment.

Lou said in Cannes he would consider changing the film to meet censors' demands in order to ensure it could be screened in China, where authorities place strict controls on what its citizens can see.

It was not Lou's first run-in with authorities. His 2000 film ''Suzhou River'', a love story about a motorcycle courier and a smuggler's daughter, won the top prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival but was banned in China.

Another director, Wang Xiaoshuai, was banned in 2001 from making films for two years after ''Beijing Bicycle'', which won the coveted Silver Bear award at the Berlin film festival.

The Tiananmen Square protests, which the military crushed in June 1989, remain one of the most sensitive episodes of China's recent history. The government has refused calls to reassess the protests it condemned as ''counter-revolutionary''.

REUTERS AB PM2226