Free China Wins Top Award at WorldFest Houston Film Festival

The documentary "Free China: The Courage to Believe", has won the "Special Jury Award", the highest award given in its category at the 45th WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival. It is the oldest independent film festival in the world—and the 3rd oldest global film festival in North America with over 4,500 entries from more than 30 countries around the world.

[Kean Wong, "Free China" Producer/Executive Producer]: "It's very exciting to receive the Special Jury Remi Award. World-Fest organization has acknowledged Free China as something that is important and for that we're very, very grateful."

This was despite attempts by the Chinese Consulate in Houston to stop the festival from giving the award.

[Hunter Todd, WorldFest Festival Director]: "It was an excellent documentary and the Jury liked it very much. They thought it was technically excellent, told a good story, and that's our motto—a good story well told. We have no real political agenda—we just like to speak for what is good."

The 53-minute film depicts the Chinese Communist Party's decade-long human rights violations against people who practice Falun Gong.

It tells the true stories of two Falun Gong practitioners—Jennifer Zeng, a mother and former Chinese Communist Party member, and Dr. Charles Lee, a US citizen and businessman. Both were incarcerated and persecuted for their spiritual beliefs.

[Kean Wong, "Free China" Producer/Executive Producer]: "We really hope that in China people are given the right and the freedom to speak, to practice their peaceful beliefs and for all types of persecution to stop, whether it's against the tens of millions of Falun Gong practitioners, Christians or Tibetans..."

The director of "Free China" Michael Perlman, who had won various awards for his previous film "Tibet: Beyond Fear", said the Chinese Consulate had also pressured the Palm Beach International Film Festival—demanding the organizers to remove Free China from its program.

[Michael Perlman, "Free China" Director/Producer]: "As an American citizen, this brazen attempt to silence free speech and expression of myself in the United States by the Chinese government I thought the news was unbelievable and very dangerous and I thought that it must be exposed so that these actions will not be repeated. I'm certainly grateful to the festivals that they have stood strong...citing our first amendment rights here in the United States and has refused to cave in to Chinese Communist government's demands."

NTD Television co-produced the documentary with World2Be Productions

Watch Free China! Latest screening info: http://www.WatchFreeChina.com