【Recap】ShPFF – Revisting E. Palace W. Palace
The landscape of Chinese queer cinema was forever changed by the 1996 release of East Palace West Palace, the country’s first film to deal with explicitly homosexual themes. ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival marked the 20th anniversary of the film with a special screening attended by writer-director, Zhang Yuan, on Friday, June 24th.
An audience of over one hundred people squeezed into Xin Café to catch the film, many for the first time. East Palace West Palace tells the story of a young gay man arrested by a handsome policeman for cruising on the edges of Beijing’s Forbidden City. Over the course of a nightlong interrogation, the young man tells his life story and brings into question the policeman’s own conception of sex, gender identity and morality. The film was ahead of it’s contemporaries in it’s thinking on emotional violence and queer sexuality. Famously smuggled out of the country for editing, it went on to win numerous accolades and screened at Cannes in 1997.
Director Zhang Yuan met the audience for an emotional Q+A session after the screening. He was touched, he said, that people still remembered his film after two decades, and that within the audience there were people who were discovering it for the first time. He shared how the story was developed through discussion with gay and queer friends in Beijing. The city at that time was beginning to see the birth of the first national queer rights movement, with forward thinking views on feminism, gender and sexuality moving from artist and activist communities into the public arena.
Zhang Yuan returned to ShPFF on Saturday June 25th for Queer Film Conference Day. The event aimed at inspiring and informing new filmmakers. He was joined by documentary filmmaker Fan Popo in a discussion on Queer Independent Filmmaking in China. The two shared insight and anecdotes to a large crowd, whilst speculating on future developments through technology and changing audience awareness.
Fora full look at ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival 2016, check out our website shpride.com/films
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