There's not much else concrete right now - the story hasn't been leaked yet, but Jiang is scouting locations in Xinjiang. The buzz is that it's going to be a road movie of some sort.

Since there's so little to discuss about the new movie, fans and the newsmedia are looking back at the last film Jiang directed, 2000's Devils on the Doorstep. While Jiang is now able to direct again for the first time since taking Devils to Cannes, the film itself has not yet received permission to be shown on the mainland. Unfortunately for those fans unable or unwilling to buy a pirated Japanese or French edition DVD or download a rip off the P2P networks, it doesn't look like the ban will be lifted anytime soon. The movie's producers re-submitted it to the censors last year hoping for a relaxation in some of the Bureau's demands for changes, but the Bureau returned the same list of objections that it had issued five years ago.

An early scene in the movie shows Japanese soldiers throwing candy to children. The censors wanted this scene out of the shooting script, but the producers kept it in. In an essay in The Beijing News, a writer called Aladdin recalls his grandmother's memories of a similar experience:

My toothless Henanese grandmother told me about the devils she saw. One day, she took my four-year-old father out of the Zhengzhou city gate. Japanese soldiers shouldering their weapons were standing guard in even-numbered ranks outside the gate (my grandmother at the time had studied a little algebra). The soldiers' headbands fluttered in the wind like diapers hung out to dry in the sun. My grandmother's skin tightened behind her ears, and a cold sweat soaked through her coarse cloak. This was a natural reaction for a Chinese peasant who had forgotten to keep her papers close at hand.

My grandmother figured she was close to death, and there was no way she could guess that a Japanese soldier would put a few hard candies into the hands of my four-year-old father, much less that mother and son would be able to walk freely through the Zhengzhou city gate without papers. She told me through toothless gums, "We were incredibly lucky that the Japanese didn't poke me and your father with their sharp knives."

Two winters ago, when my grandmother once again started telling her grandson about that period of history, I put another story that had momentarily left me speechless - Devils on the Doorstep - into the DVD tray. I said to the old woman, toothless but still able to recall times long ago, "Grandmother, watch this - are these devils like the ones you saw?"

On the screen, the devils who eventually destroyed a town called Rack-Armour Terrace took some candies from the pockets of their uniforms and put them into the hands of Chinese children. My grandmother said, "Your father also ate candy from the Japanese." I furtively glanced over at my father to see his reaction. When his eyes met mine, he said, a little bit embarrassed, "I've forgotten. What your grandmother says may have happened." I swallowed the words that were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to ask what it tasted like, the candy given by the Japanese. What brand was it? I nearly let slip a virtue that our people would rather forget - before pain and suffering, our feelings cannot compare to the novelty, sensitivity, and long aftertaste of sweetness.

A reviewer going by the name of 101 writes about unofficial screenings of Devils:

[In May, 2000], a theater in Shanghai held a secret screening of Devils on the Doorstep. The version shown at this screening was on three Betacam cassettes. There was applause when it finished, but there were also some older comrades who extremely disliked the film. When I left the theater is was already noontime, and the piercing sunlight illuminated a man dressed in black. He held a bag containing those three cassettes. This version was what people later called the 162 minute "Cannes Competition Version".

In the same year, Devils on the Doorstep was selected by the 101 Shanghai Film Workshop to be entered into their "favorite domestic films of 1999-2000" competition, and won best picture, best director, and best screenplay. This was the only time the film won any domestic awards.

In the same year, Devils on the Doorstep was secretly screened in Shanghai for a second time. This time the screening was even more concealed - it took place in a hotel room. The small room was filled with famous literati, and people sat on the floor or leaned against the walls to watch the movie. The version show this time was the same as in the first screening. People compared the experience to watching pornographic films during the Cultural Revolution.

In the five years since this took place, DVDs have saturated the Chinese marketplace, and recording technology has advanced to the point where pirated telesync DVD versions hit the streets days after a film's premiere. Even if a film is banned, there's no need for Betacam tapes in a hotel room anymore.

Note: This post originally translated the name of Jiang Wen's new movie as The Sun Rises Again.