The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) ordered Thursday cinemas to stop the film's public screening and distribution. It also revoked the film's public screening license.

Beijing Laurel Films Company, which co-produced the racy migrant tale with Beijing Poly-bona Film Publishing Co. Ltd and Beijing Zhonghong Real Estate Development Company, was banned from making films on the Chinese mainland for two years.

"Lost in Beijing" debuted on the mainland on Nov. 30. It received its license for public screenings after more than 10 minutes of pornographic scenes were deleted, such as when the heroine was raped by her boss.

The film depicted the struggles of migrant workers in Beijing. It starred Chinese mainland actors Fan Bingbing as a foot-washing girl and Tong Dawei as her cleaner husband.

A SARFT official said the film's producers had used the cut scenes from the original copy in the advertisement and had spread the deleted scenes through the Internet.

"These promotion activities have violated China's film administration regulation and advertisement law," he said.

SARFT ordered the producers to turn in their original copies in15 days. SARFT asked all producers, directors, actors and actresses to correct their wrong deeds.

Fang Li, a producer with Laurel Films, said all the banned scenes spread on the Internet were taken from pirated copies. He stressed the company would cooperate with SARFT to trace the pirated copies.

Early last year, the producers had used the original copy instead of the deleted one at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival, according to SARFT.

"This also violated China's film administration regulation," the SARFT official said.

Fang said they used the original version because they had no time to prepare a German version for the German audience.

On Dec. 29, 2007, SARFT issued a ban prohibiting producers of erotic movies from competing for any film awards.

The ban also prohibits directors and leading actors from taking part in such any awards.

"The heaviest punishment for such violation would lead to a five-year ban of perpetrators from the movie industry," according to the ban.

The SARFT asked nationwide studios not to produce films with footage of hardcore activities, rape, whoring, obscene sex exposing human genitals, or sex freaks. Vulgar conversations, nasty songs and sound effects with sexual connotation were also restricted.