Film screenings in Beijing tonight, tomorrow and Sunday look at transgender issues, bisexuality, gay life and censorship in China
Beijing’s Queer Comrades (LGBT filmmakers and website) is screening a series of movies in the next few days for Pride month.
Tonight the Beijing American Center is hosting a screening of three films and a Q&A with Japanese director Inoue Kana and film curator Hibino Makoto.
Kana will show her film I Don’t Care, a love story with an intersex main character and she will present a film by another Japanese director, Shoji Kubota, a cross-dressing coming-of-age movie The Little Girl in Me (Boku Naka), which was selected by the Montreal World Film Festival.
The screening will also feature Rites of Passage, a 2011 film by American director Jeff Roy about an Indian transgender woman on her transition journey.
Tomorrow afternoon there will be a film screening and debate on bisexuality at the French Embassy in Beijing’s Chaoyang district.
‘The Chinese LGBT movement has spent little attention on bisexual topics,’ said Queer Comrades. ‘Up till now, bisexual voices have seldom been heard, and there hasn’t been much focus on the stigma bisexuals have to deal with. Time to change that!’
The French documentary Bisexual Revolution (La Bisexualité: tout un art) will be screened followed by a discussion with bisexual experts Hong Kong University humanities and creative writing assistant professor Jin Yelu, Chinese LGBT rights activist Su Qian and founder of Brazilian bisexual organization Bi-sides Alex Tso.
Tomorrow evening the Beijing American Center will screen three Chinese short films and a feature film, The Sons of Tennessee Williams by Tim Wolff.
Wolff will be at the screening to talk about his film, which is about gay life and drag scenes in New Orleans.
On Sunday a screening and panel discussion will focus on the issue of censorship in China. The government’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) bans all LGBT-related content from films, TV and radio.
‘The general prohibition on LGBT-related content in films has been a huge obstacle for queer film production in China, which has only been able to develop underground,’ said Queer Comrades. ‘During recent years, gay characters have occasionally popped up in mainstream films - does this signal a change in the present censorship system?’
The event held at The Netherlands Embassy, will feature screenings of PHILOMIRROPHOBIA II (an experimental movie by Chinese filmmaker Yuke), Tongzhi in Love (a 2008 documentary about being gay in China) and Red Lights (a Dutch film about a young boys unexpected encounter with a sex worker on a night out).
In between the screenings filmmakers, a legal expert, film distributor, film festival curator and journalist will discuss the censorship of cinema in China.
Watch trailers for The Little Girl in Me and PHILOMIRROPHOBIA II here:
by Anna Leach
Source – Gay Star News
