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For most directors, having your film picked to represent your country at the Oscars is a career-high. But forSarmad Sultan Khoosat, whose drama Circus of Life is Pakistan's contender for Best International Film at the 2021 Academy Awards, the experience is bittersweet.

The drama, about a devout Muslim man whose life is upended when a video of him dancing goes viral on social media, will be screening for Academy voters but not for locals. A combination of state censorship, the coronavirus pandemic, and a concerted hate campaign by far-right extremists have meant the only people who have been able to see Circus of Life have been those outside Pakistan.

"It is wonderful that people around the world can see the film, that it has a universal appeal, but this is a local story and I chose to make it in Punjabi to connect to the local audience," says Khoosat. "That no one in Pakistan can see this movie is abig loss. For me, it's a tragedy."

It all started so well.Circus of Life premiered in South Korea, at the Busan International Film Festival in 2019, where it won theWindow on Asian Cinema honor, theKim Ji Seok Award. The movie had quickly cleared Pakistan's various censor boards"they asked me to bleep a few swear words, that was it" saysKhoosat and its local theatrical release was set: Jan. 24, 2020. In October 2019,Khoosat put the first trailer of the film online.

Then his world blew up.

The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a far-right Islamic party, seized on the video, claiming the trailer, and by extension, the film, was blasphemous and anti-Muslim. Their fury centered around images of a devout Pakistani man the lead, played by Arif Hassan dancing with abandon to a song from a 1974s Lollywood movie (Pakistan's mainstream film equivalent to Bollywood).

"Pakistan is not like Iran, this is a society where people are cool with dancing and singing, we've always had that in our cinema," says Khoosat. "But it is still a very patriarchal society, with very strict, binary gender roles. People aren't used to seeing a bearded man, someone they would assume is religious, dancing and singing like this."

In response to the protest, the Pakistan government ordered a review of its censorship approval for Circus of Life.

"They looked at the film again and cleared it again," says Khoosat. "But by then it was too late."

Just days before, the director had been doxed: supporters of the TLP has published his personal information online. Khoosat's faceoverlayed with a sniper's target was plastered on social media posts and on posters across the country. Far-right Imams started calling him out at Friday prayers.

"It was really, really crazy. These people have a lot of power on the streets here, and a lot of power on social media," he says.

Spooked, the federal government, on Jan. 21, just three days before the film's official release, Circus of Life was pulled. In an unprecedented move, the government sent the movie for review to the Council of Islamic Ideology, a body thatgives legal advice on Islamic issues to the government and the Parliament.

Then came COVID-19.

With nation-wide lockdowns, cinemas shut and the whole question of a theatrical release became moot. Circus of Life was selected as Pakistan's official Oscar entry and got a qualifying run via an online Vimeo release geo-blocked to Pakistan. Khoosat says he has "given up" on the idea of a cinema rollout for Circus of Life and is currently trying to secure a digital bow in Pakistan.

"I didn't want to make a controversial film. I was super careful, in what I showed but also in the overall tone of the movie, not to be judgemental, to be very decorous and respectful of who we are as a society here," says Khoosat. "But maybe this shows what the film shows: that as a society, we are very confused."

Khoosat says he's moved on from his "crazy, terrible year." While he still avoids social media "I don't need to wake up to hate every morning"he's hopeful his Oscar campaign will raise the profile of Circus of Life. And maybe encourage younger filmmakers in Pakistan.

"Internationally, I am hopeful because what happened with the film was a bigdisappointment for younger Pakistani filmmakers. This was as independent a film as you can get. And what happened with Circus of Life shows how very compromised the independence of the artist is in Pakistan."

Read more here:
Oscars: Director of Pakistani Contender 'Circus of Life' on Facing Death Threats and Censorship - Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK, Jan. 28, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire BIGtoken today announces its placement in an editorial published by NetworkNewsWire ("NNW"), one of 50+ trusted brands within the InvestorBrandNetwork (IBN), a multifaceted financial news and publishing company for private and public entities.

To view the full publication, Censorship and Data: The Stakes and Consequences Are Getting Serious, please visit: https://nnw.fm/yzWoa

A recent Pew Research article pinpointed major concerns with social media platforms. Americans have complicated feelings about their relationship with big technology companies, the article observes. While they have appreciated theimpact of technologyover recent decades and rely on these companies products to communicate,shopandget news, many have alsogrown criticalof the industry. The article goes on to report that a Pew Research Center survey found that roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults say it is very (37%) or somewhat (36%) likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable. Just 25% believe this is not likely the case.

The events of the last few weeks have made that article appear almost prophetic as issues of censorship and privacy have gained additional prominence on the world stage. A number of private and public companies are working to resolve these issues, with many of those companies relying on blockchain to provide their services.Leading the pack is BIGtoken, the first consumer-managed data marketplace where people can own and earn from their data. The opportunity ahead has such potential that parent company SRAX Inc. (NASDAQ: SRAX) is spinning out BIGtoken into a separate publicly traded company and has entered into a definitive share exchange agreement with Force Protection Video Equipment Corp. (OTC: FPVD). The separation of BIGtoken provides shareholders a pure play in the consumer-managed data sector.

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About SRAXSRAX (NASDAQ: SRAX) is a financial technology company that unlocks data and insights for publicly traded companies. Through its premier investor intelligence and communications platform,Sequire, companies can track their investors behaviors and trends and use those insights to engage current and potential investors across marketing channels. For more information on SRAX, visit http://www.SRAX.com.

NOTE TO INVESTORS:The latest news and updates relating to SRAX are available in the companys newsroom athttp://nnw.fm/SRAX.

About NetworkNewsWire

NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is an information service that provides (1) access to our news aggregation and syndication servers, (2)NetworkNewsBreaksthat summarize corporate news and information, (3) enhanced press release services, (4) social media distribution and optimization services, and (5) a full array of corporate communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and content distribution company with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that desire to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. NNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in todays market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness.

NNW is where news, content and information converge.

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For more information please visithttps://www.NetworkNewsWire.com.

Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website, applicable to all content provided by NNW wherever published or re-published:http://NNW.fm/Disclaimer

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NetworkNewsWire is part of theInvestorBrandNetwork

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BIGtoken Focused on Top Consumer Concerns: Censorship and Data - GlobeNewswire

Many conservatives, and certainly supporters of Donald Trump, are applying a label of "censorship" to the moves by Twitter and other social media platforms to suspend the former president's accounts -- as well as those of many others who swim in the same sort of muddy waters of insult and innuendo.

As a news organization, of course, we are strong proponents of free speech and reflexively opposed to the idea of censorship.

But this debate is more complicated than that.

Our own experience teaches us that the Wild West is an ugly and harmful place.

Years ago, when the World Wide Web was born, we were excited about its potential to broaden public interaction. Here, as one piece of that, was a chance for the public to comment in real time on the stories we published.

What a great step forward in the democracy, we thought. What a force for civic good. It provides, we thought, an expanded public forum to enable the community to debate the issues of the day.

No question, it certainly offered and still offers that. But it also offered the chance for hurtful people to sign onto car crash stories and make fun of the victims of those crashes. It also offered the chance for neighbors to trade insults. It also made it easy for uninformed people to pass along baseless rumors and for unscrupulous people to spread lies.

We found that in addition to opening the doors to a new age of enlightened civic debate, the new forum also opened the floodgates to a sea of ugliness. Our editors seemed to spend all their time tamping down this ugliness.

So we had to develop rules of fair play.

And then we had to enforce them.

Regrettably today, the regulated commenting on dailyherald.com and on our social media pages are not as energetic and muscular as we once envisioned or would now hope.

But it is much more responsible. And much more honest. And much fairer.

We heard an analogy the other day that seemed to put it best. Imagine you are in a restaurant. And imagine someone gets belligerent and starts shouting. As a customer, you would expect the restaurant to do something about it. And the restaurant undoubtedly would.

Would the restaurant's behavior constitute censorship? Well, you could argue that the restaurant is suppressing someone's speech. But it still would need to be done.

Yes, Big Tech is too big, and we all should be concerned about how powerful it has become. That's an important issue.

But it is a different issue than the issue of whether someone should be able to disrupt your meal with insults, threats and misinformation.

A private business has the right to regulate the environment within it.

The real question is how do we allow for the regulation of onerous behavior while protecting productive debate?

See more here:
Editorial: Censorship and the online cafe - Chicago Daily Herald

An Amazon logo appears on an Amazon delivery van, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020, in Boston. Amazon wont be forced to restore web service to Parler after a federal judge ruled Thursday, Jan. 21, 2021 against a plea to reinstate the fast-growing social media app favored by followers of former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, file)

Conservatives gasped with horror when Twitter banned President Trumps account and Google, Apple and Amazon banned Parler.

Why is anyone surprised? Media outlets have been censoring conservatives for decades in America.

Back in the days before iPhones and social media, the only way for politicians to communicate with the public i.e. voters was through old-fashioned, traditional means: like newspapers, television, radio and the US Postal Service.

In 1984, former Congressman Alex McMillan of Charlotte (R-NC9) won a squeaker of a race over Democrat D.G. Martin by the slimmest of margins, 321 votes out of over 225,000 votes cast.

To provide historical perspective for Millennials, Apple introduced the MacIntosh personal computer in 1984. A decade later, the internet was developed. Two decades later, along came social media. There were very limited avenues through which conservatives could communicate directly with their constituents without filters from editors and journalists who disagreed with them and essentially suppressed their free speech.

I was chief of staff to Congressman McMillan when his 1986 re-election race was the #1 targeted campaign in the country. In an attempt to build mutual trust with the Charlotte Observer, we allowed their quite capable political reporter, John Monk, full access to our office for four months to do an in-depth story about congressional life in general.

When the article came out in the Charlotte Observer, it painted McMillan in an unfavorable light right in the middle of a tight re-election campaign. After blowing out John for writing such a hatchet job, for which I had to apologize later, he sent me the full article as printed in the Augusta, Georgia, paper which was part of the same Knight-Ridder chain that owned the Charlotte Observer.

No one in Augusta, Georgia, voted for McMillan in Charlotte, North Carolina.

It was fair and balanced, just as John said it would be. But the Observer editors had selectively edited the story down about 30%, ostensibly for space concerns. It was blatantly obvious they did it to help D.G. Martin in his rematch against McMillan because they agreed with him on every issue, not McMillan.

We submitted numerous opinion pieces to the Observer over the next decade only to see most of them rejected. The Observer was owned and operated by staunch liberal Democrats who simply did not want to allow conservative Republicans a forum to air their political views and philosophy.

As a privately owned company, they were entirely within their right to deny access to anyone they did not want to publish. It was just infuriating to conservatives to be constantly told the press is fair, neutral and impartial, when in actual practice, they are not.

We went around such editorial roadblocks by mailing out eight million newsletters, town hall meeting notices and congressional updates to 250,000 households at taxpayer expense via the congressional franking privilege. Not proud to have to admit such a wasteful government expense, but the franking privilege and about $1.5 million in campaign ads, an enormous amount in 1986, were the only two ways we could get past media censorship and biased reporting in North Carolina.

It worked; Alex McMillan won re-election by 4,221 votes, a virtual landslide compared to his 1984 win.

Not much has changed in the media world politically since then except for the rise of Fox News, which used to be the news outlet of choice for conservatives for 30 years. Subscriptions and circulation have plummeted at large newspapers, but they still are echo chambers for such partisan political narratives as Russian Collusion and Moderate Joe Biden.

The most troubling thing is how elite liberal media editors use the freedom of the press guarantee in the First Amendment to pound out the free speech clause of the same amendment for others. Be completely fair to all points of view or be honest enough to admit a specific bias so readers can make up their own minds about whether they agree with you or not.

Conservatives have to stop whining about the liberal bias of the media and start owning their own news outlets. Conservatives should figure out what is going to replace social media and get ahead of the curve, not be smashed by it.

There were thousands of newspapers and pamphlets, all of them partisan to the federalist or anti-federalist point of view at the beginning of the republic, many virulently so. America is going to be far better off as a country going forward with a cacophony of opposing views instead of the silence that follows dictatorial censorship of views that media chairmen, publishers or editors dont like.

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HILL: Censorship of conservatives is nothing new The North State Journal - North State Journal

Actor Saurabh Shukla said the COVID-19 induced lockdown gave him an opportunity to read and reflect, more importantly get his creative juices flowing, and he ended up making a full-length one man feature film where he donned the hat of a writer, director and the only character.

The 90-minute film, currently in its post-production stages, is funny, dark and thrilling, Shukla said, adding that he would be soon sending his latest movie for screening at festivals.

The veteran actor, all excited to work in Kaushik Gangulys first Hindi flick Manohar Pandey, also said that Kolkata is his home, and he loves the city for his unique character, culture and food.

Ganguly has made some amazing films. He is multi-talented, and can write direct and act equally well. This film has a soul, it has humour in it but you cant really brand it as just another comedy. Also, I will be sharing screen space with talented co-stars Supriya Pathak and Raghubir Yadav, and I am looking forward to it, the Bollywood actor, who is in the city for shooting of the film, told PTI.

Shukla, also said that he would want to do a Bengali film someday.

Asked about his journey in the film industry from Shekhar Kapurs Bandit Queen to Manohar Pandey the National Award-winning actor underlined that the experience so far has been a fulfilLing one, but not without a fair share of hiccups.

I was overweight, and was usually cast in roles that amused the audience. Comedy also elicits pathos, but that concept wasnt there in Hindi films. We just want an overweight person to be funny. It was Sudhir Mishra, who gave me the role of a professional killer in Is Raat ki Subah Nahi, and my work was noticed and appreciated, the 57-year-old actor said.

Talking about the mushrooming OTT (over-the-top) sites, and the fear that it could overshadow big screen films, Shukla said that every new platform creates its own space, and can co-exist with other mediums. He, however, expressed concern over the growing censorship over art and films in the country.

Censorship has its pros and cons. It is, in some cases, necessary. But, objecting to anything and everything that is not suited to a particular taste and culture is not acceptable, he said.

On a lighter note, Kallu Mama of Ram Gopal Varma Satya also shared that he loves sports, and takes table tennis pretty seriously.

As and when I visit a new city, especially for my shoots, I get in touch with the table tennis clubs there. I have had the opportunity to play with professionals, be it in Los Angeles, London or Lucknow. Not many know that Bengal has some very talented TT players. I got to play with some of them at a club in Bhawanipore here, and it has been an enriching experience, he signed off.

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Saurabh Shukla: Censorship has its pros and cons, necessary in some cases - The Indian Express