Queer China, 'Comrade China' (dir. Cui Zi'en)
By Isabella Tianzi Cai
In the online film journal Film Threat, Phil Hall recently reviewed Cui Zi’en’s ‘Queer China, Comrade China’, calling it “a genuinely fascinating look at Chinese sociology in a state of continual evolution.”
Hall’s review reiterates the issues raised in Cui’s work, which examines China’s LGBT culture and history through a number of insightful interviews from various political, historical, cultural, legal, as well as psychological viewpoints. He condenses the first half of the documentary as follows:
China was relatively late in openly acknowledging the basic civil rights of its homosexual population – it wasn’t until 1997 that the Communist government decriminalized “hooliganism,” as it was officially known. However, the acceptance of non-heterosexuals into a mainstream societal position has been complicated, although the resistance bears no resemblance to the religious-fueled homophobia that has become commonplace in the United States. Indeed, the film explains that same-sex unions are seen by many as a disruption of the yin-yang harmony within the Chinese mindframe and the disruption of the cohesive family unit that was stressed since Mao Zedong’s rise to power.
