Ways of Seeing Queer China is a full-day program exploring queer independent cinema in China. The program offers a unique opportunity to watch landmark queer cinema from China, to engage with the filmmakers and to discuss many ways of seeing queer China, as an art of endurance and resilience.

In Bad Women of China (2021) Xiaopei He documents the life experiences and desires of three generations of Chinese women from the 1920s to the present day with a raw, DIY aesthetic. The film offers a refreshingly irreverent perspective on historical experiences combining interview, video essay, and home movie formats, while wryly documenting the potential of lesbian and polyamorous lifestyles to challenge established ideas of feminine propriety.

The screening is followed by a conversation with He Xiaopei, moderated by Jeroen de Kloet. They will delve into questions of the political-cultural and aesthetic use of queer cinema in China, and how the past can help to question the present and imagine a different queer future, both in China and beyond.

He Xiaopei is an indie film director and executive director of Pink Space, an organsiation dedicated to promoting sexual rights and gender equality. As a teenager, Xiaopei was a shepherd in the hills. After graduating from university, she joined the Chinese Mountaineering Team, from the 1990s she devoted herself to the feminist and lesbian movement in China. and took part in the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. Later she went to the UK to study sexuality and cultural studies. After graduating with a Ph.D., she returned to China to set up Pink Space 


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.