For more than a decade, the Beijing Queer Film Festival (北京酷兒影展) has been playing cat-and-mouse with the Chinese authorities. The event is a constant target of the government’s censors, who prohibit the depiction of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender lives in films and TV shows. Screenings are often forced to cancel, and mainstream venues are out of the question. Yet, the film festival manages to survive, offering a rare platform for LGBT filmmakers and the communities who remain largely invisible in the state-controlled media.
Yang Yang (楊洋), a co-founder of the Chinese queer festival, was in Taipei last month to present Our Story: The Beijing Queer Film Festival’s 10 Years of Guerrilla Warfare (我們的故事:北京酷兒影展十年游擊戰) at the Women Make Waves Film Festival (女性影展). The 2011 documentary, directed by Yang, gives an insider’s look at the struggles of the organizers as well as their resourcefulness and resilience.
A draft law passed in September, however, might signal new obstacles ahead as it gives the authorities the legal right to shut down independent film festivals, following the widespread government crackdown on freedom of speech in recent years.
Photo courtesy of Women Make Waves Film Festival
“We will test the limits and see how far they will go [with the new law]. We make one move; they strike, and we will just retreat and find a different way. It has always been like this,” Yang says.
GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP
The Beijing Queer Film Festival was established by a group of friends, including Yang and gay filmmaker Cui Zien (崔子恩), at Peking University in 2001, and has since become the oldest independent film festival in China. Being independent of the government’s censorship by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (國家廣播電影電視總局), the festival, like many other similar events across the country, often falls victim to government repression, which has significantly increased since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took office in 2012. Screenings are canceled; venues are shut down, forcing participants to move to less conspicuous places like cafes and private homes, and rely on publicity by word of mouth.
Photo courtesy of Women Make Waves Film Festival
And though the censors recently allowed the commercial release of LGBT-themed Seek McCartney (尋找羅麥), a Chinese-French production, without demanding any cuts, Yang says that censorship remains strong, and certainly bears no direct relation to independent film showcases.
“Film festivals... are a civil assembly, and that is what the authorities are afraid of,” the 33-year-old filmmaker and curator says.
“The government doesn’t treat film festivals as a cultural activity. It regards them as a social and political matter… For now, it remains rather hopeless to hold independent film festivals [in China],” she adds.
Another law makes illegal any international film festival that contains activities deemed to damage “national interest and social stability.”
“The authorities used to interfere and find administrative flaws to shut us down. Now what we do is punishable by law,” Yang says.
ALTERNATIVES
For now, the small yet thriving community of LGBT filmmakers disseminate their work through less regulated venues, such as video streaming Web sites.
“The authorities control Web sites, but there are many loopholes. You can find a large number of films without screening permits available on the sites, including the works of Cui,” Yang says.
The LGBT films in China are mostly short or documentary works since the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to investors and commercial releases. Filmmakers either fund their own films with their own money or seek funding from foreign embassies and foundations. The Dutch embassy, for example, has been the main sponsor for the Beijing Queer Film Festival, and many of the festival’s screenings and forums take place at the embassy, beyond the purview of the Chinese authorities.
“The repression of sexual and gender minorities is common in a patriarchal society. In China, there is totalitarian rule, which is actually a variation of patriarchy. The LGBT movement is, by definition, anti-patriarchy, and I think this is a deeper reason behind the Chinese government’s crackdown on queer events,” Yang says.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would