Love Rises in the East
Chinese Queer Cinema

Pera Film in collaboration with Beijing’s Love Queer Cinema Week is proud to present the program Love Rises in the East: Chinese Queer Cinema. Though homosexuality was legalized in China in 1997 and attitudes in society are gradually becoming more open-minded, China’s LGBTI+ community still faces challenges. For China’s LGBTI+ activists, filmmaking is an important tool for bringing issues to light. The Love Queer Cinema Week presents a cutting-edge selection of Chinese and foreign queer films. It offers a rare place of reflection and exchange about queer films and celebrates diversity.

Presented parallel to the 25^th LGBTI+ Pride Week, the program will be premiering three documentaries: Papa Rainbow, a recent film exploring how Chinese fathers react to their children coming out of the closet and the issues that the families encounter; Our Story, a short film about the story of the 10-year “guerrilla warfare” waged by the Beijing Queer Film Festival to fight against censorship, I Am Going to Make Lesbian Porn, a short documentary in the form of an interview surveys the issues and perspectives regarding women's sexual desires and women's bodies. Filmmaker Zhou Hao’s admirable first narrative feature The Night introduces a young male and female sex worker who become friends while working in the same narrow, urban alleyway, and a young man who loses his heart to the male hustler. A delicately orchestrated sequence of emotional exchanges in this triangle offer myriad negotiations of intimacy, and of short and long-term survival, for all involved.

This program’s screenings are free of admissions. Drop in, no reservations.

 
in collaboration