5. Coming Out of The Box, Lalas with DV Cameras

This chapter focuses on China’s earliest documentaries about lesbian subjects, The Box (Ying Weiwei, 2001) and Dyke March (Shi Tou/Ming Ming, 2004), examining the imbrication of technique and content, and the issue of “objectivity” in documentary filmmaking. It further raises the question of how we produce knowledge about social others. Foregrounding the tension between The Box’s knowledge/power scheme and LGBTQ-oriented politics, I then turn to Dyke March to explore the contrast in its sensitivity to the socio-political specificities of its subjects, and its political activist responsibility for its subjects. This chapter finally introduces four more recent lesbian documentaries from China, highlighting a developing trend in Chinese lesbian documentary filmmaking: independent production that emphasizes both collaboration and the specificity of a lesbian identity.