Love Your Films and Love Your Life: An Interview with Fan Popo

Hongwei, Bao

Abstract

Invited by the Institute for Screen Industries Research, the University of Nottingham, Chinese queer filmmaker and activist Fan Popo visited Nottingham in February 2018 for a series of events titled “‘Queer Cinema as Art, Activism and Industry’,” including research workshops, student seminars, and film screenings. Dr Bao Hongwei, Assistant Professor in Media Studies, interviewed Fan about the latter’s filmmaking career and his participation in transnational screen industries. This interview focuses on the status quo of queer independent filmmaking in a transnational context, with an emphasis on the opportunities and challenges that creative professionals face in increasingly commercialised and competitive work environment.

Fan Popo is an independent filmmaker and queer activist from Beijing. He studied screenwriting at the Beijing Film Academy. After his graduation in 2007 he became a leading figure in China’s queer filmmaking and activist communities. His documentaries on LGBTQ and gender issues have been screened at film festivals around the world. Fan Popo is the author of Happy Together: A Complete Record of a Hundred Queer Films. He is also an organizer of the Beijing Queer Film Festival and the China Queer Film Festival Tour. In 2015, he sued China’s censorship authority, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), for banning his film Mama Rainbow from online video streaming platforms, and this became a landmark event for China’s queer activism. Fan’s films include: New Beijing New Marriage, Be a Woman, Chinese Closet, Mama Rainbow, The VaChina Monologues, and Papa Rainbow. Fan is currently based in Berlin, writing scripts and making new films.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 24, 2019
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2019
• Journal: Positions: Asia Critique
• Print ISSN: 1067-9847
• Electronic ISSN: 1527-8271
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 799-809
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-7726994
• Keywords: Literature and Literary Theory; Cultural Studies; History; Visual Arts and Performing Arts
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3526775
• Publisher URL: https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/article-abstract/27/4/799/140702/Love-Your-Films-and-Love-Your-Life-An-Interview?redirectedFrom=fulltext