History of the Chinese LGBT Film Festivals
Letters written to Asia Catalyst by one of the organizers of the original Chinese LGBT Film Festivals describe the poignant – and often vexing – story of their repeated attempts to screen these films in Beijing. The organizers used a variety of strategies, including cell phone text messages and underground publicity, but were blocked at every turn. In order to protect the organizers from further repercussions, their names have been omitted from this account.
"The first film festival was in 2001. At the time, I was a [college student] at Beijing University, as well as part of a student film society that organized screenings…[A few of us decided to organize a gay film festival.] Because we were a student organization, we decided to hold the event in a library on the BeiDa campus. We needed the approval of the BeiDa student activities committee.
Because we knew the topic was politically sensitive, we had to play around with the words a little. In Chinese, “homosexuals” also have another name, “comrades”. This started in Hong Kong, and today it is widely used. But on mainland China in 2001, this word was not yet well known. So when we applied to the committee for approval, we just said we wanted to organize a “Comrade Cultural Festival”, and it sounded vague. The committee chair didn’t understand the real meaning of “comrade”, and thought it referred to Communist comrades, so they easily approved our application. We had no funds for other kinds of publicity, so the posters were all drawn by hand, and all the students’ work was totally done for free with no compensation. Our publicity was totally public and open. We were psyched up and we didn’t give any thought to political strategy.That Friday afternoon, before the curtain went up on the film festival, the university organization committee called us up and said that the Ministry of Public Security had arrived at the university, and was planning to investigate our screening in plain clothes without revealing their identities; however, they had not asked to be put in touch with the festival organizers. So, we could only proceed as we had planned and move carefully…[And on the second day], sure enough, as expected, the security agents went to the student activities committee and to our film society, and began their investigation. The ministry forbade the film festival from continuing. But a lot of international media reported on the film festival, and if you look it up today you can probably still find some reports.
Although at the time we were “peacefully” shut down, our film society was also punished afterwards. Each time we went to apply for other activity permits, the student activities committee and library function room staff all found ways to hassle us.
In the second half of 2004, we finally began planning a second film festival. We got in touch with an AIDS group and they took charge of funding it. [A student group at BeiDa sponsored the event], so, the lecture hall approved our rental application again.
From the standpoint of security, we had learned a lot more this time about publicity, based on our experience four years earlier. We kept the information under tight wraps until about three days before opening night, especially the film festival’s time and location. We sold tickets to individuals through e-mail. The opening night was Friday, April 25, and we first screened the film, and in the evening held the official opening. For the sake of security, before the first screening we didn’t give any speeches, didn’t put out any posters, and planned to wait to put them out until after the opening.
But about ten minutes before the opening film was set to begin, we were just setting up the stage, when the screening technician from the function room discovered our posters, and saw that on top it said “Second Beijing Gay Film Festival”, and immediately reported this to his boss. The lecture hall said they “could only accept elegant, educational performances”, and threw us out. In the middle of our struggle and negotiations, the security guards blocked the whole audience outside the door. Almost immediately the area around was packed with several hundred people, including people from on campus and off campus, Chinese people, foreigners, and foreign reporters. We knew there was no way this conflict would have a positive outcome, so all our volunteers scribbled down the cell phone numbers of the crowd, and promised to contact them with an alternate location or else to refund their tickets.
Later that night, those of us working on the organizing committee found another screening location: a documentary film director offered us the screening room he used at the Beijing 798 art space. It had screening equipment, and we could use it for free. So we sent text messages to all the cell phone numbers we’d collected from audience members, and the morning of the second day we posted our posters and announced that the space at 798 would be the screening venue.
Over 200 people who’d been unlucky at the first venue came on over to the new place. After the first screening was done, even though the screening room could not accommodate many people, and most people didn’t have chairs and had to either stand or sit on the floor – nonetheless, the atmosphere was really positive and supportive. Because of the change in location we didn’t publish any news openly, and the government security bureaus didn’t know about us, so they didn’t interfere in any way.
After the second film festival in April 2005, we immediately began to organize the first Beijing gay cultural festival. We hoped we could do an exhibit showcasing the fruits of ten years of building a Chinese gay culture. The format of the exhibit would include drama, dance performance, drawings and paintings, and photography; as well as discussion panels. Gay artists from every part of the country were invited to Beijing.
Naturally, although the scope of the activity was big, we were very careful about publicity, and waited until three days before the opening of the show to begin publishing info about it online. Nonetheless, the online police of the security bureau were surprisingly well-attuned to this, and immediately came to the organizations involved in the event, and said that this activity had not been approved by the government and could not proceed. So, we started to look around Beijing at every kind of restaurant, looking for a function room. Our only hope was a new but very famous gay bar, “On & Off”. The bar owner was really supportive of us, and he was happy to let us use the bar. The space wasn’t big, but there was a small dance area that we could use for performances.
We didn’t finally set the location of the culture festival until Friday, and that morning our volunteers were rushing around setting up the exhibit. We didn’t announce the change in venue on the web, but just told people privately. However, perhaps the security bureau was watching us pretty closely, scouring the web and looking for info. That day, at about three in the afternoon, three police cars with about ten officers came to the bar. We spent about two hours talking to the cops, and our line was that this was just a private party organized by the bar, and there wouldn’t be any wild sexual activity. We tried to calm the police down a bit, and told them there wouldn’t be any big problems.
As a result, the cops didn’t have any real basis for shutting down our operation. Instead they found an excuse, and said that the bar’s fire safety measures weren’t up to standard, and closed the bar for a week. In this way, we were tossed out of the bar by the cops. And the bar was the unluckiest victim of this event.
After about a week, in order to both compensate the On & Off bar, and to fulfill our dreams of completing our culture festival performance, we connected with the bar owner and planned to use New Year’s eve to perform the show we’d originally planned to have at the culture festival, and just said that this was a business activity of the bar’s. But we were unlucky again…[A reporter found out about this and posted it on a website,] and the security bureau police naturally came to close the bar again. As a result, the bar’s two financial partners lost their investment because of our culture festival, and before long, the On & Off bar was shut down. And this is how Beijing lost its most famous gay bar forever…"
