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 mother in his birthplace of Shaanxi Province, China. But as a child of China’s Cultural Revolution, 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. Now that his children are grown and he has moved to Beijing, he discovers who he really was all along, calling himself The Siberian Butterfly.
Director: Anna Sophie Loewenberg
Producers: Stijn Deklerck, Xiaogang Wei
Produced by Queer Comrades, in cooperation with Sexy Beijing.
China 2012, Running Time: 30 min
中文
