An independent research podcast
An independent research podcast on banned and censored cinema — one film, one ruling, and the story behind who decided what could be seen.
Banned. Cut. Withdrawn.
Every ruling has a story.
Latest episode / File 007
The Blue Kite, and the decade that followed
A family drama threaded through the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution — and the reason its director was barred from making films for the better part of a decade. We trace what the state objected to, and what survived in the edit.
Explore this episode
Suppressed007China · 1993
dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang
Audio forthcoming
An animated memoir of girlhood after the 1979 revolution, pulled from cinemas and a regional television broadcast. A case study in how a single coming-of-age story becomes a diplomatic incident.
Not banned by the state — withdrawn by its own director for twenty-seven years. We use it to ask a harder question: what counts as censorship when the hand doing the cutting is the filmmaker’s own?
Method · 8 min read
State prohibition, refused classification, distributor shelving, self-withdrawal — four very different fates often filed under one word. A working taxonomy for the project.