CAN you imagine living in a country where an actor's image is banned from television screens because she appeared in a film that the government claimed was "unpatriotic"? Where cast members of that film are blacklisted from all national award ceremonies? Or where officials in the state's film organisation are sacked because of their involvement with the film?

It seems like the sort of dystopia that could have been created by George Orwell or Aldous Huxley in the 1930s or 1940s.

But this censorship is a very real, and current, issue in China.

The actress in question is Tang W ei, star of Oscar-winning director Ang Lee's recent film Lust, Caution.

The sexually explicit spy thriller was critically acclaimed in Britain, but those involved with it have faced a massive backlash in China.

The film is set in Shanghai during the Second World War.

Tang plays a student activist who seduces a Chinese intelligence official collaborating with the occupying Japanese forces.

But Tang's image has been banned from television as the Chinese censors say the film is too sexually explicit and glorifies unpatriotic behaviour.

Other films to have been banned in the country include ET and Pirates Of The Caribbean because they contain references to the supernatural.

It is almost impossible to imagine what life must be like in a country where even the viewing of "family" films is so closely controlled and where artists such as Ang Lee are penalised for expressing views that the government finds unpalatable.

Film has always been an important medium when it comes to dealing with difficult questions from the past or to expressing disaffection with a present regime.

And it has always come with difficulties, and even dangers, as suffered by Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by an Islamist extremist after the release of his short film, Submission.

But it is this ability to uncover stories which may otherwise be hidden that has made the serious filmmaker's role so important.

Thank God we live in a country where films that push the boundaries are not stamped out. We have Shane Meadows' This Is England and Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Would they have survived the cut under a more repressive regime? I doubt it.