The cast and crew of Maiden Work waited six years for their underground film to surface in China. They never thought it would.
On finally seeing the packaged product, they almost wish it hadn't.
"The first to reveal the biggest controversy in Chinese film -- homosexuality," blares the DVD cover hyped by distributors, depicting two women entwined in an embrace.
The women do not appear in the film. In fact, it has no love scenes. Maiden Work is a perfect example of what Chinese tabloids have termed "art films repackaged as porn."
In a country where people watch far more films at home on disc players than in the cinema, Maiden Work is one of many thematically risque pictures that never stood a shot at the big screen.
But after a bit of sexing up by unscrupulous DVD producers, the film has finally found its niche, an improbable twist of fate for a low-budget art house work battling for market access.
China has prudish content guidelines and no movie ratings, let alone art houses. Film makers often opt for self-imposed exile, showing their work at film festivals abroad, rather than face likely rejection by the censors.
The DVD strategy is risky but legal. It reflects how forces of commerce can overcome those of ideology, and sex can smooth over political commentary, in one of China's most spottily policed industries.
But at what cost to directors and producers?
In Maiden Work, amateur actors play young bohemian types in post-Mao Beijing. The film self-consciously probes the trials of a lesbian couple and a painter of nudes but, most revealingly, the film makers behind the scenes.
Repackaged, renamed and edited to accentuate the same-sex liaison, the DVD's lurid veneer gives little hint of the raw experiment inside. "Minors under the age of 18 barred from viewing," the cover stresses.
A synopsis on the cover suggests a non-existent love triangle. The movie also has a new title, roughly translating into "Women of desire, body to body".
"We just wanted to promote our work after all these years," Li Dayu, one of Maiden Work's producers, who was not told of the changes. "Now they're marketing it like a triple-X movie."
This way, distributors contend, sales are much stronger. They had no exact figures. But one of the video agents involved, Guangdong Tianyu, said its first 50,000 copies had been moving fast around the country since being released in late April.
"It's not that graphic, is it?" said Tianyu sales chief Liu Gaofeng. "Anybody in any other trade would do the same. If it was really a triple-X film, it would never have been approved."
Hollywood films rule China's DVD market, where piracy makes the latest blockbusters available for about a dollar.
But private video outfits and more venturesome state publishing houses are also warming to edgy China films, formerly left out in the cold. Needing well-connected backers for mainstream release, producers sometimes cede distribution rights for paltry sums.
For publishers, it's a calculated gamble. Unlike cinema releases in China, authorities vet DVDs only after they hit the market, and in many cases, not at all. But if the film makes a splash, pirates wipe out most of their profits.
To avant-garde film makers, it can present a dilemma: either don't sell, or sell out.
"That's probably the only way they can sell them ... because there's no marketing," said one industry insider.
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