“I Want to Make Queer Films, But Not LGBT Films”: An Interview with He Xiaopei

He Xiaopei is executive director of the Pink Space Sexuality Research Centre in Beijing and a film director. Her films include The Lucky One, which follows an HIV-positive woman with advanced cancer retelling her story of struggle with poverty and a judging society, and Our Marriage: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men in China, an exploration of the lives of four lesbians who decided to marry gay men in order to secretly pursue their relationships with their girlfriends and at the same time fulfil their social obligation to get married, and Yvo and Chrissy, which follows the life of a queer anarchist community in Brighton, UK.

Séagh Kehoe is a postdoctoral fellow in Chinese languge and Culture at the Contemporary China Centre, University of Westminister. They recently completed their PhD in contemporary Chinese studies at the University of Nottingham. Their research focuses on ethnicity, gender, and media in modern and contemporary China. They have published in Asian Ethnicity and The China Quarterly.

Bao Hongwei is associate professor in media studies at the University of Nottingham. He holds a PhD in gender studies and cultural studies from the University of Sydney. His research primarily focuses on gay identity and queer politics in contemporary China. He has published articles in Cultural Studies; Health, Culture and Society; Global Media and China; Interventions: A Journal for Postcolonial Studies; Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art; JOMEC Journal; and Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research. He is coeditor of Queer/Tongzhi China: New Perspectives on Research, Activism, and Media Cultures (with Elisabeth Engebretsen and William Schroeder, 2015) and author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (2018).