CINEMASIA PRESENTS ‘OUT & PROUD IN CHINA?’ AUGUST 3 DE BALIE IN AMSTERDAM

This Friday, CinemAsia presents ‘Out & Proud in China?’ during the Amsterdam Gay Pride festival – featuring the Chinese documentary “Our Story: 10-year ‘guerilla warfare’ of Beijing Queer Film Festival” followed by a discussion about LGBT life in Asia.

CinemAsia brings the diversity of Asian cinema to the attention of the Dutch audience and offers a media platform to discuss Asian topics on screen.

OUR STORY – 10-YEAR ‘GUERILLA WARFARE’ OF BEIJING QUEER FILM FESTIVAL (CHINA 2011)

Out & Proud in China? For ten years the Beijing Queer Film Festival has battled oppression and homophobia to fight for more visibility for gays and lesbian issues in China. The film documents this struggle and the ‘guerrilla’ tactics used by the festival’s organisers. Yang Yang, director of the film, has been executive director of the festival for 10 years, providing an essential space for the queer and allied communities of Beijing. The film will be screened in Chinese with English subtitles.

Children of Srikandi: The First Indonesian Docu about Queer Women

By: Yvette Benningshof

For the first time in the history of Indonesian cinema, queer female filmmakers are breaking the code of silence. Eight Indonesian women, all lesbian, had their coming out on the big screen, as they produced a documentary together about themselves: ‘Children of Srikandi’.

This is the first documentary about queer women in Indonesia; unique in this country with the largest Muslim population. The film is inspired by the mythological figure Srikandi from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. In traditional Javanese shadow puppet theater (wayang kulit), Srikandi signifies a strong and brave character who is neither woman nor man. Srikandi is often depicted as a female warrior.

“AS PAINT GOES BY…” a Photo Essay by Beatriz Mousinho & Tania Won

As Paint goes by is a photo essay made by Maria Beatriz Mousinho (Portugal) and Tania Won (Russia). Beatriz is an artist who does different solo projects and for her it was first time to work with a partner. Her first exhibition was in 2008 in Holland, her last was in Indonesia in 2011. Tania Won is a photographer who lives on Bali (Indonesia). She started her life as a photographer in 2006 and had her first foreign solo exhibition in February 2012 in Cambodia.

...A broken shell is as beautiful as a shell that is perfect...”
(Martim, 5 years old)

Beauty exists in everything and in every stage of its existence. Wrinkles are statements of life on the skin, memories of moments that once existed. They create patterns, transforming a historyless surface into a map indicating the travelled roads and paths, through mountains and deserts, rivers and seas of life.

Old age people show different skin maps, and in their beauty and diversity can be read how they have lived their existence.

We have chosen 11 different women in Bali, Indonesia, with ages ranging from around 75 to over 100. Their lives differ, some worked hard, some lived more stronghearted than others, some still have a bright and strong energy that makes them look like young girls, some collapsed in their sorrows.

Waria: The Lives, Struggles & Issues Raised by Yogyakarta’s Transgender Community

By: Monica Dominguez

If you decide to romp the late night streets of Yogyakarta, you might encounter one of the area’s 350 waria performing in the streets, soliciting sex or just hanging out.

The term waria is an amalgamation of the Indonesian word for woman, wanita, and the word for man, pria, which has been coined to describe the transgendered population of Indonesia. These days in Yogyakarta society has buttonholed its warias into a specific category of entertainers (namely buskers and street artists), beauticians and sex workers, because they are deemed socially unacceptable in other professions.

Most of the warias in Jogja are male-born with male genitalia crossdressing as females, and many of them consider themselves to be Muslim.  “You can’t say a waria is a man, and you can’t say a waria is a woman. A waria is a waria.” [- Vera , Wariazone.].

Waria: Man/Woman/Muslim

The Senin-Kamis (Monday through Thursday) School is a school located behind a beauty salon in Jogja specifically welcoming and teaching the queer and  transgendered population about Islam, and providing a space for them to pray.