Bolstering queer desires, reaching activist goals: practicing queer activist documentary filmmaking in Mainland China

By the middle of the 2000s, a new wave of documentary works on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) topics started to appear in China. In contrast with the previous body of LGBTQ documentaries, they are made by filmmakers explicitly identifying as LGBTQ, with many of them closely involved in LGBTQ social activism. Affirming the decidedly 'activist' nature of the new wave of documentary filmmaking, this article discusses a selection of contemporary LGBTQ documentaries and their filmmakers in light of recent activist community debates. It does so by employing an activist dichotomy that emerged throughout these debates, a dichotomy centering around the rejection/the embracing of normative politics in LGBTQ visibility strategies. This activist dichotomy, and its subsequent application to documentary film, is reminiscent of and is often related to the opposition that originated and developed in Euro-American contexts between 'queer' and 'homonormative' approaches to activism and LGBTQ cinema. Emphasizing local filmmaking agency, and paying specific attention to local meaning-making and strategic activist processes, this article highlights the local hybridization of this transnational discourse, and proposes a lens to look at contemporary Chinese LGBTQ documentary filmmaking practices that moves in-between the 'queer' and the 'homonormative'.