This is a programme which focuses on feminist film in Chinese cinema. The film Woman Human Demon, has been claimed as the only real feminist film in China so far. My aim is to investigate how this film can be the only real feminist film and how it influences contemporary Chinese female directors and cinema by exploring Li Yu’s female films.

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Although the concept of ‘feminism’ had not emerged in 1980s China, this film still reflect a tough situation that women were suffering. The director Huang Shuqin achieved that by telling a woman’s experience of how she is viewed by society and the way she can live her life with society, which is essentially dominated by male.

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The exhibition also shows a contemporary Chinese female director Li Yu’s two films , Fish and Elephant 今年夏天(2001) and Lost in Beijing 苹果(2007), to make an comparison with Woman Demon Human, in order to investigate whether the film is feminist film and find out the difference and relationship between them.

Li Yu is a popular female director in China, most of whose works created the topic of the growth of female subject. She usually expresses unique female consciousness by placing woman image into realistic social relationship.    

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We will also have a screening of Woman Demon Human at Close-Up cinema on Wednesday, 4th of July. Linda Pittwood, a PhD Researcher in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at Birmingham City University will join us to have a discussion after the screening. Her research will examine the female body in contemporary Chinese art 1984-present in relation to women’s studies discourses in China. She also as the editor WAGIC Women and Gender in China (a space of discussing gender, sexuality and feminism(s) in China past and present).

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