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.