When we were doing interviews for the documentary The Vagina Monologues,
I interviewed professor Ai Xiaoming.
When I asked her about how does she think about the impact of this drama play,
she was not as optimistic as I thought.
I was quite upset in the beginning. I was thinking, why she is so negative about society?.
And later on, I found that she's really very realistic
and really, see, very, you know, very intelligent about the Chinese society.
Somehow, although, The Vagina Monologues, this drama play had played in many places,
but, this patriarchal society is still so hard for women's rights.
So I asked that I really appreciate her giving me this point of view.
For me, I think, art is one way to express ourselves, and also get more people to be involved.
With this, together with other people and to create a better life.
But, somehow, for China it's still a very slow progress.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done, besides, this, making arts.
Like organizations, like feminist voices and other queer and women's groups.
What they do is really amazing.
I would say it's really my great honour, my big pleasure to be a witness of the whole progress.
But, somehow those contributions really, really rely on them.
They put their mind, their resource and their passion into it.
In China, because of its special society environment and government,
we can't do big events, such like demonstration on the street.
So, one of the very important ways is to communicate with the audience and the society is media and art.
So, film is a very important medium to generate understanding for a wider audience in China.
So, but unfortunately, the media are controlled by the government, with very strict censorship.
Topics like queer and femininism are very sensitive.
So far, there are very, very few films related to LGBTQ topics that could be screened openly.
The society, we lack this kind of information.
Therefore we want to screen those queer films as much as we can.
So, before 2009, it was a Beijing Queer Film Festival, founded in 2001 already.
But there are very few chances for people from outside of big cities in China to see queer movies.
In 2009, we founded this group called China Queer Independent Films,
and one of our biggest goals is to let people from smaller cities see queer movies.
So, I think almost every year we reach more than ten cities.
We do screenings, more than 30, and we reach thousands of audience,
and moreover, that we bring some Chinese independent filmmakers, who had made queer films to those cities.
They would meet with the local audience, have a different kind of discussion,
and also get inspiration for their future work on queer movies.
So it was such a beautiful memory for me, but somehow, because, me myself,
I want to focus more on filmmaking myself,
So, I'm not involved with this group anymore.
But, I have been always offering my films for them to screen and also give them suggestions.
As China is such a big country, there are many, many differences between different regions,
and the East Coast and the West, and rural areas and urban areas, and
even visiting the city, there are also big issues, such like class, and income,and migration.
So, I have been always concerned about this for my documentaries.
When we made Mama Rainbow, I already wanted to include some families from the countryside
or from smaller cities or from western parts of China.
But, unfortunately we didn't find a suitable family to be included.
Actually, we had talked with one family from Inner Mongolia and we already planned to go there,
but in the end they rejected us.
But, when I was making Papa Rainbow I got six families.
Actually three of those families are from Northwest China
and some of them from the East Coast, but also from smaller cities such like Changzhou and Ganzhou.
So, when I was showing the movie I had to edit a good Google map
into the film to tell people where the city is.
Because even the Chinese audience don't know where it is,
which is very interesting for the progress of filmmaking,
because you assume that people from smaller cities are more conservative,
but I have seen those families, some of them are very open.
I think it's really not that this depends on where they are from and who they are.
It really depends on what they think and how they know about the information.
It's also a big progress for me being educated and also visiting the LGBTQ community.
There are many different intersectionality
topics, like transgender are more marginalized.
I've been trying to work on it.
In the last few years, I had made a documentary
about drag queens and transgender in Guangxi province.
And they are also, some of them are ethnic minorities.
They are Zhuang people.
So, this is very important.
And, also, I'm seeing a homeless transgender from Qingdao city in Shandong province.
I went to interview her and made a small video about her story.
But these are obviously not enough.
There are stories need to be told such like
countryside queer stories, and people who are more oppressed, such like
migration topics are still not so well told in the queer community.
I think, I have a lot of different stories playing in my mind.
I hope, I can do more contribution.
After making activism documentary films for more than ten years,
I decided to take break from that.
First of all, I want to change the filmmaking style,
new direction. Secondly, I think I'm still involved with LGBTQ filmmaking and advocacy.
But,I have more creative ways to make films.
Because I see that the society and the community need more creative ways
to see how the LGBTQ community is.
So, I focus on more experimental and fictional stories.
Somehow, I feel, a lot of stories, it's really hard to tell,
it's a way of the documentary filmmaking,
But, you can create stories based on reality and show
the reality that you have seen.
So, for example, one of my latest projects is about
queer and transgender people within the urban change.
So, I want to combine the story,
such like urban change together with queer community.
 Because, I see, I can see that these two groups together, there are intersecionalities.
Both of them are marginalized from the authority and the government.
And also, I have another story focus on fetish community.
I'm now living in Berlin for script writing about
queer Asian artist lives in Europe.
This is also a new topic for me.
When you travel the identities kind of change because of the space.
And what I had experienced, my experience in a European city,
has really inspired me with a lot of interesting stories.
I hope, I could still keep on following my work and I will show more of my
stories, interesting ones,to you.
