Abstract
As a leading feminist and queer filmmaker and activist from the PRC, He Xiaopei uses documentary filmmaking to engage with contemporary feminist and queer issues in China and globally. Her film The Lucky One (宠儿, 2012) documents the last days of a woman living with HIV/AIDS; Our Marriages: Lesbians Marry Gay Men (奇缘一生, 2013) portrays the ‘co-operative marriage’ (形式婚姻) between lesbians and gay men; Yvo and Chrissy (如此生活, 2017) interviews queer anarchists living in the UK under austerity; and Playmates (玩伴, 2019) interrogates interracial and intercultural relationships between children who grow up together in the same household. Underlining all these films is a sense of play, pleasure and fun, which He Xiaopei uses to disrupt rigid boundaries of identities. This affective politics indexes He Xiaopei’s queer feminist intervention. As she challenges the male dominance in LGBTQ politics, she also problematises the often sex-negative attitude popular in contemporary feminist politics. He Xiaopei’s queer feminist politics is therefore intersectional and international, subversive and reparative at the same time. It departs from the ‘telling-bitterness’ tradition of identity politics and explores the political potential of play, pleasure and fun for an affective and transformative queer feminist politics.
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