BEIJING (AFP) - Award-winning film director Zhang Yuan, a member of Chinas acclaimed "sixth generation" of movie-makers, has been detained for taking drugs, police and state media reports said Friday.
Zhang was detained along with two friends in a police raid at his eastern Beijing apartment in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Beijing News reported.
Police found Zhang high on crystal methamphetamine, or "ice," and the drug ketamine, it said.
An officer with Beijings vice squad confirmed the media reports were correct but declined to offer further details.
Police raided the apartment in response to a "public tip" that people there were taking drugs, the Beijing News said.
It quoted police as saying an "excited and disoriented" Zhang initially tried to prevent officers from entering the flat.
"Who are you? Why are you in my apartment? This is so inhuman," he reportedly shouted repeatedly.
Most major Beijing newspapers devoted several pages to the case, and said Zhang had been sent to a drug treatment programme.
Zhang, born in 1963, is among a famed group of Chinese directors, including Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, who emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s and are known as the nations "sixth generation" of filmmakers.
He made his name with gritty and envelope-pushing early works such as 1993s "Beijing Bastards," about the citys youth subculture, and "East Palace, West Palace" (1996), Chinas first movie with a homosexual theme.
He won best director at the 1999 Venice Film Festival for the family drama "Seventeen Years" and a similar award at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival for the semi-autobiographical "Little Red Flowers, "about a boy bucking Chinese conformism.
Various media reports quoted experts as saying that, given the circumstances of his case, Zhang was unlikely to face formal charges but would be forced to complete a strict drug treatment course that typically lasts up to a month.
No comments:
Post a Comment