Shitou (activist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shitou (born 1969) is a Chinese activist, actress, filmmaker, artist,[1] and gay icon.[2] She has been active in the Chinese gay scene since the 1990s and was the first lesbian to come out on Chinese television.

Biography[]

Shitou was born in 1969 in Guizhou to an ethnic Miao family[3] and graduated from the Guizhou Art Academy. Shitou was a part of the Yanmingyuan artist colony before its dissolution.[4] In 2000, Shitou was featured on a Hunan Satellite Television talk show program called "Approaching Homosexuality". According to scholar Hong Wei Bao, this was "the first time that a self-identified... lesbian 'came out' in PRC's official media."[5]

In 2001 Shitou had a starring role as Xiaoling in the Chinese lesbian film Fish and Elephant.[6] She later went on to direct several films, many in collaboration with her partner, Ming Ming. Her first was Dyke March (2002).[7] In 2006 Shitou released the documentary/essay film Women Fifty Minutes (女人五十分钟)[8] and in 2015 directed the film We Are Here. Shitou helped found the Beijing Queer Film Festival and the China Queer Film Festival Tour.[3]

Filmography[]

Shitou Filmography[3]
Film Year Role
Fish and Elephant 2001 Xiaoling
Dyke March 2002 Director
Gu Wenda: Art, Politics, Life, Sexuality 2005 Director
Women Fifty Minutes 2006 Director
Gate, Mountain, River 2006 Director
Queer China, Comrade China 2008 Herself
We Are Here 2015 Director

References[]

  1. ^ "A History of Lesbians Organizing in China – China Development Brief". Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  2. ^ Engebretsen, Elisabeth Lund. 2008. Love in a big city: Sexuality, kinship, and citizenship amongst lala ('lesbian') women in beijing. Ph.D. diss., London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), p.234.
  3. ^ a b c Bao, Hongwei. "Queer eye for Chinese women: Locating queer spaces in shitou's film Women Fifty Minutes." Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 6, no. 1 (2019): 77+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed February 18, 2021).
  4. ^ "woman on film". www.fridae.asia. Retrieved 2021-02-19.
  5. ^ Bao, Hongwei. "Queer comrades: towards a postsocialist queer politics." Soundings: A journal of politics and culture 73 (2019): 24-37. muse.jhu.edu/article/742550.
  6. ^ Shi, Liang (2015). Chinese lesbian cinema : mirror rubbing, lala, and les. Lanham [Maryland]. ISBN 978-0-7391-8848-4. OCLC 894895375.
  7. ^ Tan, Jia (2016-01-01). "Aesthetics of queer becoming: Comrade Yue and Chinese community-based documentaries online". Critical Studies in Media Communication. 33 (1): 38–52. doi:10.1080/15295036.2015.1129064. ISSN 1529-5036. S2CID 147187211.
  8. ^ Reynaud, Bérénice. "The Good Cats of Chinese Documentary – Senses of Cinema". Retrieved 2021-02-18.


Stub icon

This article about a Chinese film director is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

  • v
  • t
Retrieved from ""