ABSTRACT
Founded in 2001, Beijing Queer Film Festival (BJQFF) is one of the longest running identity-based film festivals in contemporary China. Since 2015, the festival has been hosted by the Institut Francais in Beijing and rebranded as Beijing Love Queer Cinema Week. Cui Zi’en explicitly labelled the BJQFF as a form of social activism This chapter analyses the production of queer subjects through various iterations of the BJQFF. Using the critical lens of catachresis, it interrogates the politics of translating sexualities, film festival culture, and social movements in a transnational and transcultural context. In Margins of Philosophy, Jacques Derrida proposes to think of language in terms of catachresis. The chapter marks an effort to conceptualise cultural translation in terms of catachresis in the context of contemporary China. Locating the Chinese queer subject in the globalisation of sexualities and identities, it examines the production of the queer subject in public culture and social movements.
