Saturday, August 10, 2002
Lesbian film tests Chinese waters
Jonathan Ansfield
Beijing, August 9: Li Yu, director of China’s first lesbian feature film, never told her male actors their on-screen blind dates weren’t interested. By the time the amateur beaux found out the leading ladies were gay, Li’s cameras were already rolling. ‘‘It was an experiment, an exploration, to see how people in society really view lesbians,’’ said the rookie director of Fish and Elephant, a prize winner at the Berlin Film Festival. Shot on 16 mm film in a shabby pocket of Beijing, the movie stars real-life lesbians nagged by the daily pressures of their Confucian, marriage-minded society: a match-making mother, a deadbeat husband and a bevy of desperate, single men. A murderous ex-girlfriend on the run from police only complicates matters. The movie was part of a flurry of recent breakthroughs for China’s largely closeted gays, officially deemed mentally ill until last year. But while homosexuals are freer to swing at a growing number of gay bars in big cities and have even ‘‘come out’’ on newsstands and web portals, public awareness is lacking. And the threat of government suppression always lurks. Li did not bother asking for the approval of Beijing’s film czars. Her film has been screened at more than 70 film festivals overseas, but only once at home, where homosexuality remains near the top of the list of taboo topics. Government censors have exacerbated Li’s struggle to demystify a quiet subculture of ‘‘women comrades’’, Chinese slang for lesbians, who in contrast to gay men are almost unheard from. ‘‘No way,’’ blurts one eligible bachelor in disbelief when the protagonist Xiaoqun tells him she likes women. Dumbfounded and without a script, he fumbles for words. ‘‘So, what’s your blood type?’’ The actor was furious, according to Li. ‘‘He said, ‘How could I possibly act in a lesbian film?’’’ Li got the idea for her film after meeting a celebrated female couple in Shanghai who traded vows with their parents on hand. (Reuters)
© 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.