Queer Night!

Part of the Jack H. Skirball Screening Series - New Chinese Cinema: The Unofficial Stories of Tang Tang, Fourth Child, Little Moth and Others

Zhang Hanzi: Tang Tang

China, 2004, 92 min., Betacam SP
Los Angeles premiere

An alluring mixture of documentary and fiction about the fabulous nights (sequins, wigs, feathers, high heels, make-up, glittery camp outfits bought in discount stores), grey mornings and cross-gender love affairs (here a man, there a lesbian) of a drag queen—sorry, “reversed role actor”— in Beijing. A certain kernel of truth is forever missed – more tease than strip here, and the film sometimes takes the spectator on a ride of cheap thrills – but there are moments (staged or not) in which the real asserts itself with a quiet violence: an exchange of gaze between two tired show-girls in a dingy dressing room, two male lovers buying underwear together, a ride in a taxi, a domestic quarrel in an unkempt apartment.

Followed by
Cui Zi’en: Withered in a Blooming Season (Shaonian Hua Cao Huang)

China, 2005, 90 min. Betacam SP
U.S. premiere

Looking at post-socialist dysfunctional families, Cui, godfather of the queer underground, follows Cocteau’s tropes in his description of a claustrophobic situation between a young girl and the brother who is obsessed by her – while being attracted to a very gay lad. He weaves it with the Fassbinder-inspired plot of a hard businesswoman mother who sleeps with her young staff – and, upon discovering that the man has impregnated her daughter, forces him to break up with her on the phone. Mixing melodrama and sassiness, Cui coins a totally queer story: two boys in bed, a girl near them, a baby en route, grown-ups are shit, so is the outside world, my sister, my love, my sissy boy, aren’t we happy.