Film Screening & Exhibit – The Siberian Butterfly

TIME:        Saturday 12 May 2012, 2.30 pm

PLACE:     Beijing LGBT Center, Building 3 , GuangXi JiaYuan, LiuFang BeiJie, Chaoyang District,Beijing, 100028 (Tel.: 010-59033730)

Film Screening! With their new documentary “The Siberian Butterfly”, Queer Comrades and Sexy Beijing unveil the complex inner world of a remarkable folk artist. Born in the countryside of Shaanxi province, the Siberian Butterfly was trained in the art of paper-cutting from an early age.  One of the only male paper-cutters in China, he gradually started using his art to explore his own identity and homosexuality, enabling him to spread out his wings and fly.

The screening will be accompanied by a small exhibition of Siberian Butterfly paper-cut works and a Q&A session with Queer Comrades director Xiaogang Wei.

Entry:     10 RMB (all proceeds go to the Beijing LGBT Center)

Trailer:    You can check out a trailer of “The Siberian Butterfly” here.

Siberian Butterfly              The artist

Born in the countryside of Shaanxi province, the Siberian Butterfly was trained in the Chinese folk art of paper-cutting from an early age.  One of the only male paper-cutters in China, he gradually started using his art to explore his own identity.  His homosexuality, his wife and his children are central themes in his impressive body of work, which presents a refreshing and unique combination of modern-day themes and traditional art techniques.

Siberian Butterfly             The Documentary

Directed by Anna Sophie Loewenberg         Produced by Queer Comrades, April 2012 Running time: 30 min.

The Siberian Butterfly is a documentary that explores issues of creativity and sexual identity in an intimate portrait of a Chinese folk artist. He learned the traditional Chinese art of paper-cutting from his grandmother in his birthplace of Shaanxi Province, China. But as a child of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), his homosexuality was deeply repressed by social convention, and so he followed the path of most men of his generation and married, having children. Still, he found an outlet for his true identity through the themes in his artwork. In this richly woven exploration of the creative process, the artist`s inner world is revealed as he patiently carves out space for his true identity through his paper cuts.

Anna Sophie Loewenberg is the host and creator of Sexy Beijing, a website and Internet TV show about life in China. The show has been reviewed online by The New York Times, CNN, and The New Yorker, and has over 15 million views worldwide.

Queer Comrades is China’s only independent long-running LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) webcast.  Queer Comrades strives to provide well-researched, informative, entertaining and positive insights into queer culture.  Its programs have reached over 20 million views worldwide.