This Must Be the Place: A Queer East…

This is the first of three pieces pub­lished in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Queer East Film Fes­ti­val, whose Emerg­ing Crit­ics project brought togeth­er six writ­ers for a pro­gramme of men­tor­ship through­out the festival.

Qing­han Chen

This year, Queer East presents a more defi­ant stance to the pub­lic. I felt it with­in the first three min­utes of Takeshi Kitano’s Kubi, the festival’s open­ing film. When a head­less corpse sud­den­ly appeared on screen, I cov­ered my eyes and near­ly screamed out loud. In the next two hours, heads were sev­ered with the flash of blades; homo­erot­ic scenes were fold­ed into the polit­i­cal intrigue. I closed my eyes more than once, retreat­ing into the dark­ness, anchor­ing myself emo­tion­al­ly. When a dis­fig­ured head was kicked off-screen, the film end­ed. I ful­ly under­stood what cura­tor Yi Wang had joked about in his open­ing intro­duc­tion: if you feel uncom­fort­able, please close your eyes.

In the cin­e­ma, I nev­er know whether each pass­ing moment will shock or stun me. Mov­ing images pour down like a water­fall, an overused metaphor for queer desire, yet they are still potent enough to shat­ter my bound­aries. But I can choose to close my eyes. With this act, my atten­tion shifts away from the images on screen and turns inward, toward my own body. As a result, I become more aware of my exis­tence. It feels like my eyes are build­ing a tem­po­rary shel­ter, guard­ing my per­cep­tion and grant­i­ng me respite. When I am ready, I can open my eyes and jump back into that fleet­ing in-between space between myself and the screen. Per­haps I could dis­cov­er new inter­ac­tions between films and space.

I expe­ri­enced a per­fect acci­dent after trav­el­ing an hour and a half to reach the ESEA Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, where the short film pro­gramme Counter Archives was held. The screen­ing room is a nar­row space with a sky­light, loose­ly cov­ered by a piece of black fab­ric. Due to British sum­mer time, the lin­ger­ing day­light dis­rupt­ed the images on the screen, mak­ing them blur­ry and errat­ic. Yet this imper­fec­tion cre­at­ed a unique feel­ing for me.