‘Asian Queers Reunited’ Presented by CiLENS e.V. 5th – 9th of June: All you need to know about the Asian Queer Film Festival.

‘Asian Queers Reunited’ is an interdisciplinary film program that invites audiences to delve into the world of Asian queerness and to embark on an intellectually and emotionally stimulating journey that explores the intersectionality of queer identity and sexuality, love and desire, both past and present.

Supported by Projekt ComE In and Sinema Transtopia and in collaboration with the Beijing Queer Film Festival (BJQFF) and Queer East, ‘Asian Queers Reunited’ provides an in-depth and nuanced exploration into the wide spectrum of Asian queer cinema and the communities behind it. It showcases two short film programs curated by BJQFF and Queer East and four compelling feature films from across Asia, accompanied by two in-person director Q&A sessions. (TXE)

TANG Xuedan (Echo) is a Berlin-based film curator and cultural producer from Chengdu, China. She founded CiLENS and Indie Chinese Cinema Week (ICCW) in 2022, both projects which embody the convergence of her multifaceted interests and ongoing research into cinema, feminism, and socially engaged practice.

Queer East (Yi Wang) is a UK-based festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities.

Beijing Queer Film Festival (Popo Fan) is currently the only film festival in mainland China to offer a public forum to films and discussions exploring sexuality and gender identities, providing a voice to the queer minority in China.

Curation Support: Yun-Chen HSU(Iris)

《一些女人》(Some Women) 

Quen Wong, Singapore 2021, 71 min. Chinese, English, Malay, and Hokkien with English subtitles, DCP

German Premiere

The screening is followed by a talk with Quen Wong

In her debut documentary, Quen, a trans filmmaker from conservative Singapore, uses her eloquent storytelling and personal journey to connect with trans women across three generations, offering a vital, often unheard perspective on their experiences while raising questions about the resilience of the present LGBTQI+ community. (BJQFF)

Quen Wong is a Singaporean filmmaker. Prior to her film-making career, she was an award-winning promo producer and content creator with National Geographic Channel Asia. Some Women, her debut feature film, won the Audience Award at the Singapore International Film Festival 2021. 

Lesbian History Double Bill: 《我们在这里》(We Are Here) + Home Ground 

《我们在这里》(We Are Here)

Zhao Jing, Shi Tou, China 2015, 59 min. Chinese with English subtitles, DCP

Home Ground

Aram Kwon, South Korea 2022, 85 min, Korean with English subtitles, digital file

German Premiere

In this special double-bill screening, two documentaries about lesbian communities are brought together. We Are Here, a film made by Chinese lesbian activists, interviews the attendees of the United Nations’ “Fourth World Conference on Women” in 1995 in Beijing. Via their candid and often hilarious narration, we witness a brief history of the Chinese lesbian movement that begins with this conference attended by three hundred lesbians. In Home Ground, the owner of the first Lesbian bar in Korea, Myong-woo, reflects on the lesbian scene in Seoul and the changes of the city’s queer spaces. (YCH)

Zhao Jing 赵静 （also “Sam 三木”） has been a pioneering LGBT activist in China since 2005. She is the co-founder and chief editor of les+, the most influential lesbian print magazine in mainland China, with readers across all provinces as well as many other countries. In 2014, she graduated from New York University School of the Arts and directed the documentary We Are Here, which was invited to several international film festivals and screened in more than 10 cities in China. In 2015, she founded Yummy with the aim to provide Chinese people with professional and positive sex education. 

Shi Tou 石头 has been an artist and a lesbian activist since the 1990s. She is China’s first lesbian activist celebrity: In 2000 she starred in the country’s first lesbian film, Fish and Elephant, which received the Elvira Notari Prize at Venice Film Festival in 2001 and the Best Asian Film at Forum of New Cinema of the Berlinale in 2022. Her paintings and photographs have been shown in Rotterdam, Chicago, Shanghai, Nanjing and Shenzhen.

KWON A-ram co-directed For the Invisible (2013), a documentary that chronicled the transition of a MTF transgendered person in 2013. In 2018, she directed Queer room and 463 – Poem of the Lost, a documentary about Thailand’s Japanese military comfort women brothels.

Karaoke Party + Community Dinner  

Join the Asian Queers Reunited curators and our vibrant community for an unforgettable evening of music, food, and films. The evening will kick off at 19:00 with a community dinner. Everyone’s invited for a taste of authentic Sichuan street food at a fair price. You are also more than welcome to bring dishes to share. After dinner, at 20:00, we will host a karaoke party, where participants are encouraged to share stories between songs, weaving narratives that reflect personal experiences or cultural tales. This format celebrates karaoke as an Asian cultural phenomenon, transforming it into a powerful medium for storytelling. Our stage is a safe space where everyone, from the seasoned storyteller to the casual singer, can express themselves freely and connect more deeply with the community. As the sun sets, an open air shorts program will be screened in the yard. This curated selection of short films will continue the theme of storytelling, showcasing works by and about Asian queer communities. (TXE)

Open air shorts: Welcome to Neverland

Free Entry/Donation Welcomed

The screening is followed by a discussion with Popo Fan

Chomp it!

Mark Chua & Lam Li Shuen, Singapore 2023, 12 min, English with English subtitles

Still Life

Sarah Kim, USA 2023, 15 min, English with English subtitles

Mom, if I were a Vampire

Deborah Devyn Chuang, Taiwan 2022, 17 min, Chinese with English subtitles

Wegen Hegel

Popo Fan, Germany 2023, 13 min, Chinese with English subtitles

Fish Boy

Christopher Yip, Canada 2023, 11 min, English and Cantonese with English subtitles

Popo Fan is a filmmaker, writer, and activist from China. He is the co-founder of the Queer University Video Training Camp and has been an organizer of the Beijing Queer Film Festival for more than a decade. 

Ben Mullinkosson, China, USA 2023, 95 min. Chinese and English with English subtitles, DCP

German Premiere

The Last Year Of Darkness revolves around a small club called Funky Town, the go-to party space for a group of twenty-year-old DJ’s, drag performers, lovers, ravers and skaters in China. In this unassuming corner bar hidden by Chengdu’s construction cranes, five locals escape their stress, even if it’s only for the night. As the sun rises and the cranes begin to move again, our protagonists are forced to face what brought them to the party in the first place. (BJQFF)

Ben Mullinkosson was raised in the suburbs of Chicago and trained in observational documentary production at Chapman University. After graduating Ben spent 11 years directing commercial work and documentary films between Los Angeles and Shanghai. The Last Year of Darkness is his second feature length documentary. His first feature length film Don’t Be a Dick About It which won the Audience Award at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam in 2018.

Free Entry/Donation Welcomed

CCTV

Samira Karimi, Iran, 2023, 10 min, Persian with Chinese and English subtitles

Water Under the Bridge

Zhang Yichuan, China, 2023, 16 min, Chinese with Chinese and English subtitles

Watercolor Rose

Dandan Lang, France, Germany, 2022, 23 min, Chinese with Chinese and English subtitles

Sadeq Es-haqi, Iran, 2022, 22 min, Persian with Chinese and English subtitles

KISS

Varun Grover, India, 2022, 17 min, English, Hindi with Chinese and English subtitles

Future Flowers

Hao Zhou, China, 2022, 10 min, Chinese with Chinese and English subtitles

The screening is followed by a discussion with Popo Fan

The shorts in this program – which all featured in the latest Beijing Queer Film Festival – outline queer love and relationships that take place in closely surveilled environments. In CCTV, two girls try to escape from surveillance while in Water Under the Bridge and Watercolor Rose, queer lovers manage to find a home. Jouissance introduces a third person in an attempt to discuss how the ghostly past coexists with our monogamous relationships. With KISS and Future Flowers, things get particularly intriguing as we enter a hopeful and surreal realm where conditions have the potential to improve. (BJQFF) 

Joyland

Saim Sadiq, Pakistan, 2022, 127 min. Panjabi, Urdu with English subtitles, DCP

Saim Sadiq is a Pakistani filmmaker. His first feature, Joyland, won the Jury Award in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 and was shortlisted for Best Foreign Feature in the 95th Academy Awards.

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