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Independent research podcast
Films they tried to silence.
An independent research podcast on banned and censored cinema — one film, one ruling, and the story behind who decided what could be seen.
Hosted by Sidu Chen
The listening room
Explore the story, then go deeper into the evidence.
dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang
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.
Audio forthcoming
dir. Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud
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.
Audio forthcoming
dir. Stanley Kubrick
Not banned by the state — withdrawn by its own director for twenty-seven years.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?
Audio forthcoming