ShPFF | Meet the Jury of the CN Short Film Awards

On April 15th, the submissions of ShPFF was closed successfully. Nearly 60 films were submitted to the Chinese Short Film Awards, of which 37 were in line with the requirements and 29 made it into the final round.

Submissions from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, USA, UK, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. are in the run for five awards, including Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Sound & Music. The jury is expecting the films to wow them!

This year, we have invited 5 outstanding icons to form our jury. They are from different backgrounds, they specialize in different fields, and the contribute to the LGBTQ community in their own ways. However, they share the same passion for Chinese LGBTQ films.

Now, let us meet the jury of 2018 ShPFF Chinese Short Film Awards.

1. Wei Wei

Wei Wei is a Professor of Sociology at East China Normal University. His teaching and research interest includes gender/sexuality, popular culture and qualitative methods, with a focus on identity formation, public space, and community mobilization organized around homosexuality in contemporary Chinese society. He is the author of two Chinese books Going Public: The Production and Transformation of Queer Spaces in Chengdu, China (2012) and Queering Chinese Society: Urban Space, Popular Culture and Social Policy (2015).

2. Iron

Ying Xin (Iron), pansexual, she is the Executive Director of Beijing LGBT Center. She worked as a volunteer in sexuality and equality area since 2009, she participated in the leadership training organized by the LA LGBT Center in 2011, and she became a full time staff in Beijing LGBT Center in 2012. Ying is the Co-founder of Wuhan Rainbow, which is a volunteer-based organization. She is also the Co-curator of the Chinese Women’s Film Festival since 2012.

She initiated many LGBT campaigns like gay wedding performance art in 2011, lesbian couple’s marriage registration in 2013, the LGBT depathologization campaign in 2012, and the Chinese LGBT affirming psychologists training in Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Xi’an, etc. She initiated the first national survey based on SOGIE along with UNDP and Peking University. She has been to many countries to share about the LGBT community in China. Her work has been covered by many media at home and abroad.

3. Jay Lin

Founder and director of the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival and of GagaOOLala, the first queer film streaming platform in Asia, Jay Lin has weaved his life as a gay dad, a media executive, a gay activist and a movie producer together into one single goal: to elevate LGBT visibility and accelerate acceptance in Taiwan and, hopefully, beyond.

After the launching of GagaOOLala, Jay Lin has been involved in several production projects; from the multi-awarded feature Tale of the Lost Boys, a Taiwanese-Filipino co-production about the friendship between a Taiwanese gay aborigine and a Filipino traveler, to the edgy short film Sodom’s Cat and, more recently, the web series Queer Taiwan about the struggles of the LGBT community in Taiwan. The series is currently expanding to new territories in its second season retitled Queer Asia. He was also the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival Teddy Jury.

4. Liying Mei

Mei Liying grew up in Wuhan and Beijing, China. She has an MFA degree from School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. Mei has directed narrative films and documentaries in China, U.S., and Italy, including her feature documentary AMITABHA and EUR: THE FUTURE OF ROME, short films NAACH (Dance) and ONE DAY, etc. Her recent fiction short film COCOON was screened at over 40 film festivals around the world, including American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, BFI Flare, Atlanta Film Festival. It won the Best Asian American Director at the 23rd DGA Student Film Award.

Mei just co-wrote and edited LUNA, a project that’s produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Studio.

5. Xiaogang Wei

Xiaogang Wei was born and raised in Xinjiang, China. He was trained as an actor at the drama department of the Xinjiang Arts Institute in Urumqi and at the Shanghai Drama Academy. Having a passion for community work and a drive to contribute to social change, Xiaogang has continually searched for meaningful ways to share his drama skills with others and to use them in socially relevant ways.

In 2005 he started to engage himself on the production side of various films and other productions benefiting different social movements in China. In 2007, he founded the LGBT webcast “Queer Comrades”, for which he hosted and directed more than 400 videos and reached over 50 million viewers/times. Since 2010, he’s the Executive Director of the NGO Beijing Gender which houses the webcast Queer Comrades. Founded in 2002, it constitutes one of the first Chinese NGOs to focus on issues of gender, sexuality and sexual health, thus fulfilling a pioneering role in Chinese society. Together with the Beijing Gender, he launched a series of ground-breaking events in China, including the China AIDS Walk, the China Rainbow Awards, the China LGBT Community Leader Conference and All Gender Toilet Program. He is also The Co-Chair of the Beijing Queer Film Festival, Advisor of UNDP Being LGBTI in China Program and 2016 Berlin International Film Festival Teddy Jury. 2013 he got the Vanguard Awards from LA LGBT Center for his contribution to LGBT movements in China.

Special thanks to all 5 juries of this year’s Chinese Short Film Awards! We look forward to the winners this June!

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