The closing event of Ways of Seeing Queer China takes place in an intimate setting, where filmmakers He Xiaopei and Popo Fan will be in conversation with scholars Hongwei Bao, Jeroen de Kloet, and Andy Zhu.

Queer independent cinema in China began to take shape in the early 2000s. The panel will discuss which key moments, figures, or informal networks have shaped its development. How can its origins be traced? How do generational differences among filmmakers, activists, and audiences influence queer cinema today? And how does the movement of filmmakers abroad reshape these cinematic practices?


Popo Fan is a queer filmmaker and activist. His films featured topics such as same sex marriage (New Beijing, New Marriage), transgender (Be A Woman), feminism (The VaChina Monologues).

He Xiaopei is an independent filmmaker and executive director of Pink Space, an organisation using films to represent invisibilised desires and lives. As a teenager, she was a shepherd and from the 1990s, she devoted herself to the feminist and lesbian movement in China.

Dr Hongwei Bao is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham (UK). He is the author of notable works including Queer Comrades (NIAS Press, 2018), Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance (Routledge 2022), and Queering the Asian Diaspora (Sage, 2024).

Jeroen de Kloet is Professor of Globalisation Studies at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and is affiliated with the Beijing Language and Culture University. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW) and the PI of RESCUE.

Andy Zhu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. As part of the ERC-funded project “RESCUE: Resilient Cultures – Music, Art, and Cinema in Mainland China and Hong Kong,” he examines contemporary Chinese queer cinema culture.


Full day schedule:
12:30 Screening of Bad Women of China (2021) with director Xiaopei He
15:00 Selection of short films with director Popo Fan
17:00 Ways of Seeing Queer China: A 30-Year Review Through Cinema (free registration)

Tickets and registration apply separately for each event.

Ways of Seeing Queer China is initiated by the ERC-funded project “RESCUE: Resilient Cultures”, bringing together queer filmmakers Xiaopei He and Popo Fan with scholars Hongwei Bao, Jeroen de Kloet, and Andy Zhu.