Shitou (activist)

Shitou (born 1969) is a Chinese activist, actress, filmmaker, artist,[1] and gay icon.[2] She has been active in the Chinese gay scene since the 1990s and was the first lesbian to come out on Chinese television.

Biography

Shitou was born in 1969 in Guizhou to an ethnic Miao family[3] and graduated from the Guizhou Art Academy. Shitou was a part of the Yanmingyuan artist colony before its dissolution.[4] In 2000, Shitou was featured on a Hunan Satellite Television talk show program called "Approaching Homosexuality". According to scholar Hong Wei Bao, this was "the first time that a self-identified... lesbian 'came out' in PRC's official media."[5]

In 2001 Shitou had a starring role as Xiaoling in the Chinese lesbian film Fish and Elephant.[6] She later went on to direct several films, many in collaboration with her partner, Ming Ming. Her first was Dyke March (2002).[7] In 2006 Shitou released the documentary/essay film Women Fifty Minutes (女人五十分钟)[8] and in 2015 directed the film We Are Here. Shitou helped found the Beijing Queer Film Festival and the China Queer Film Festival Tour.[3]

Filmography
Shitou Filmography[3]
Film Year Role
Fish and Elephant 2001 Xiaoling
Dyke March 2002 Director
Gu Wenda: Art, Politics, Life, Sexuality 2005 Director
Women Fifty Minutes 2006 Director
Gate, Mountain, River 2006 Director
Queer China, Comrade China 2008 Herself
We Are Here 2015 Director

References
  1. "A History of Lesbians Organizing in China – China Development Brief". Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  2. Engebretsen, Elisabeth Lund. 2008. Love in a big city: Sexuality, kinship, and citizenship amongst lala ('lesbian') women in beijing. Ph.D. diss., London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), p.234.
  3. Bao, Hongwei. "Queer eye for Chinese women: Locating queer spaces in shitou's film Women Fifty Minutes." Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 6, no. 1 (2019): 77+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed February 18, 2021).
  4. "woman on film". www.fridae.asia. Retrieved 2021-02-19.
  5. Bao, Hongwei. "Queer comrades: towards a postsocialist queer politics." Soundings: A journal of politics and culture 73 (2019): 24-37. muse.jhu.edu/article/742550.
  6. Shi, Liang (2015). Chinese lesbian cinema : mirror rubbing, lala, and les. Lanham [Maryland]. ISBN 978-0-7391-8848-4. OCLC 894895375.
  7. Tan, Jia (2016-01-01). "Aesthetics of queer becoming: Comrade Yue and Chinese community-based documentaries online". Critical Studies in Media Communication. 33 (1): 38–52. doi:10.1080/15295036.2015.1129064. ISSN 1529-5036. S2CID 147187211.
  8. Reynaud, Bérénice. "The Good Cats of Chinese Documentary – Senses of Cinema". Retrieved 2021-02-18.


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