At CinemAsia Film Festival in Amsterdam this year, Chinese queer activist, writer, and filmmaker Cui Zi’en’s Queer China, ‘Comrade’ China was selected for an official screening followed by a panel discussion titled “Queer Asian Imagination.” The film was grouped with eight other LGBT films in the Queer and Asia program, a key component of CinemAsia. Cui met with the program attendees after the film and answered their inquiries about LGBT culture in China. Below are some YouTube videos documenting the Q&A session with Cui. Also present at the discussion were Michiel Baas from the International Institute for Asian Studies, Hong Kong filmmaker Kit Hung, CinemAsia board member Jeroen de Kloet, as well as Yang Jin, who appears in the film. In the videos below, Cui’s answers in Chinese are omitted, but were spoken in English by a translator (seen in the orange shirt).
Cui points out one major difference distinguishing Chinese gay population from that elsewhere in the world. “Many young Chinese gay and lesbians, they also go to gay bars,” he says. “But one difference is in China, they also aspire to get married as heterosexuals. I think that’s one of the biggest difference.”
Cui also notes the tension between the state and gay cinema in China today. He says, “The law environment in China is very different in terms of filmmaking. There are thirteen prohibitions in China in terms of movie-making. One of them is that you are not allowed to make a gay-themed film. That’s why you can’t see gay-related films in mainstream cinemas or film festivals. Even a Hollywood movie like Brokeback Mountain, when they tried to enter the Chinese market, it was impossible.”
The newest issue of the online film journal Senses of Cinema features lengthy reviews by film scholar and Cal Arts professor Berenice Reynaud on new films from Mainland China. Titled “Men Won’t Cry – Traces of a Repressive Past,” Reynaud covers a dozen international titles that screened at last fall’s Vancouver International Film Festival, giving special attention to four new films from the Mainland, as well as the Hong Kong feature Night and Fog by Ann Hui. Her analysis is particularly astute at discerning issues of identity, gender, power and nationhood in the formal approaches taken by each film. The following are some choice excerpts, though readers are advised to read Reynaud’s appreciations in full:
This is the first of three interviews produced from the “Meet the Filmmakers” series held in Feburary 2010 at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing. The series, co-presented by the Apple Store and dGenerate Films, is an ongoing series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology.
Cui Zi'en, director of Queer China, 'Comrade China', speaks at the Apple store in Beijing. (Photo: Robert Douglas)
Cui Zi’en is a director, film scholar, screenwriter, and novelist based in Beijing. He is an associate professor at the Beijing Film Academy. Cui Zi’en is a premiere avant-garde digital filmmaker in China. He has published nine novels in China and Hong Kong, and he is also the author of books on criticism and theory, as well as a columnist for magazines.
The video of Cui’s interview is in four parts, with an English transcript following each video. Video of Part One is below. Click through to view both videos and the full transcript.
Note: English subtitles for each video can be accessed by clicking on the CC button in the pop-up menu on the bottom right corner of the player.
Cui Zi'en, director of Queer China, Comrade China, speaks at the Apple store in Beijing. (Photo: Robert Douglas)
Following up on our recent “Meet the Filmmakers” series at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, here are a couple of links to local coverage of the events.
At The Beijinger, Dan Edwardstalks to Karin Chien about the Apple Store events and China’s digital filmmaking revolution.
At the Global Times, Robert Powersreports on Apple Store appearances made by filmmakers Jian Yi and Cui Zi’en.
We’re pleased to announce that the “Meet the Filmmakers” series will continue with other filmmakers appearing at the Apple Store Sanlitun over the coming months. Stay tuned for details.
dGenerate Films is teaming up with the Apple Store in Beijing to present a new monthly series to showcase China’s newest filmmakers powered by digital technology. Digital tools, from digital video cameras to editing software, have placed filmmaking in the hands of the people. Listen and watch how award-winning directors use digital technology to create their latest movies, attracting worldwide attention and acclaim.
All events will be held at the Apple Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, starting at 7pm.
Events are listed below in English; scroll further to read them in Chinese.
We found an interesting video on Danwei.org, a website about media, advertising and urban life in China, in which reporter Jeremy Goldkorn interviewed Yang Yang and Cui Zi’en, organizers of the 4th Beijing International Queer Film Festival, at the festival’s opening on June 17, 2009. In this candid and humorous conversation, two of China’s leading queer activists talked about the history of the festival since its initiation as a student group event in 2001, the subtlety around the terms “homosexual,” “comrade” (tong zhi), and “queer” (ku er)–the last two were used as euphemisms to bypass the official surveillance–and the improvements (or the lack thereof) in gay rights in China.
Cui Zi’en introduced his film Queer China, ‘Comrade’ China, a pioneering documentary “[bringing] together forty of the most influential people in the movement from the past 30 years.” The film, now available for purchase and rental through dGenerate Films, was the closing documentary of the festival and the opening night film of 2009’s ShanghaiPRIDE, China’s first ever LGBT pride festival.
Part One: Toronto International Film Festival (September 10-19, 2009)
One looks to comprehensive film festivals, such as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), for an overview of contemporary cinema that offers both breadth and depth. TIFF’s expansiveness, for example, allows one to make some judgments about the relative place of particular kinds of film in the world right now. I would like to try something of the sort with Mainland Chinese cinema in the context of TIFF, in particular how several new films might be situated in the world-cinematic scene.
Although Jia Zhangke seems in the process of retooling his cinema to head in new directions (though his public reaction, uncomfortably aligned with the Chinese government’s, to the Melbourne Film Festival Affair gives one pause), Jia-ist cinema, through its profound effect on most younger independent Chinese directors, seems lately more restrictive than liberating in its influence. Film language in “mainstream” indie Chinese films (both docs and features) seems to have temporarily congealed into something like formulaic liturgies: fetishization of the long take, the distant camera, the objective tone, the unedited minutiae of daily life.
At the same time, commercial Chinese film has adopted its own pathologies, giving us a series of big budget bloated historical epics cautiously tucked away, far from the sensitivities of the Film Bureau, into genres that are safely protected from any possible overt contemporary relevance. Several of these latter works found their way into TIFF, which has frequently, in the past ten years, extended a generous welcome to foreign fare that might attract the attentions of North American distribution. Since sword-wielding costumed Chinese actors sold in the past (thanks, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and your progeny), they have gained a marketable sheen that TIFF is one of the key agents in promoting.
Tony Rayns and Shelly Kraicer, programmers of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s big Dragons & Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia section, have announced a program that will showcase a total of thirty-five features, four mid-length films and twenty-two shorts, as of publication. Dragons & Tigers is one of the preeminent showcases of East Asian films in the world, and a stepping stone for many young Asian filmmakers. This year it will feature five World Premieres, eight International Premieres, twelve North American Premieres and two Canadian Premieres from seventy countries.
Four dGenerate Films directors are featured in the program.
Gay activist and radial filmmaker Cui Zi’en’s Queer China, ‘Comrade’ China uses rare testimonies from theorists, activists and artists to outline the modern origins of Chinese homosexuality through its attempted suppression to its breakthroughs in the last decade.
Zhao Dayong’s (whose documentaryGhost Town will have its international premiere at the New York Film Festival on September 27) Rough Poetry brings together political theater and faces in closeup by putting eight characters in a cage, playing themselves, including a cop, a prostitute, and a poet.
Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide II is a sequel to her dGenerate title Oxhide and uses the occasion of making dumplings with her parents to structure this formally daring, wryly amusing look at family dynamics, economic burdens and the ethics and aesthetics of cooking from scratch.
Yang Heng’s (Betelnut) Sun Spots tells a tale of love, betrayal and revenge set in a verdant mountain paradise in central China, and captures the anguish and passion of a youthful lost generation.
What is a Chinese film? Ever since I’ve started living and working in Beijing over six years ago, most serious discussions about Chinese cinema ultimately come down to this elemental question, either in its descriptive mode (what defines a Chinese film?) or in its more urgently prescriptive version (what should a Chinese film be?). Often, it’s filmmakers themselves who seem most anxious about the issue. Behind it lie several subsidiary anxieties: “What do Westerners want from Chinese films?”, “What’s my role in Chinese society?”, “Are films art, or commerce, or politics?”
A couple nice mentions lately of a couple of our filmmakers as well as on dGenerate Films. Cindy Carter of website Paper Tiger includes Cui Zi’en amongst her list of China’s leading documentarians, while Richard Brody of The New Yorker reminds us not to forget about Ying Liang.
dGenerate Films is a new non-theatrical distributor of independent contemporary films from China. Our uncensored, award-winning films are selected for their artistic merit as well as their educational value. Films are available for purchase on DVD and VOD, as well as for exhibition rental and broadcast.
