by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
Farewell My Concubine | 1993
Upon its release in 1993, Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine became the first Chinese film to win the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, a prize it shared with Jane Campion's The Piano in a rare tie. The film was banned and censored both in its native China and in the United States thanks to Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, who reportedly cut around 20 minutes from the film's theatrical cut, only to release the complete version on home video, which remains intact to this day.
For most of its life, the Cannon Group was a minor studio known for brawny B-movies like Death Wish, Cobra, Missing in Action, and Masters of the Universe. But during the 1980s, under the direction of co-owners Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who bought the company in 1979, Cannon also used some of its profits to take chances on risky auteur-driven projects in an attempt to gain some prestige. One such project was Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear, a deal Golan and Globus infamously made with Godard on a napkin at the Cannes Film Festival, where the pair were tenaciously courting filmmakers.