From the tenacious roars of 60s art subcultures in Tokyo, Japan to the spine-chilling, prayer-like whispers of contemporary Southeast Asian cinema, queer lives have always been found at the center of artistic reflections of cultures and histories. With this edition Asian Movie Night is exploring how to engage with our (queer) pasts and what we see in the (queer) stories told by those that came before us.
Who has been made present and who has been left wanting by the sidelines?
What happens at the intersections of queerness with national identity, culture, community and state?
Sanguine Specters Stick to the Skin is a reflection on past and contemporary cinematic depictions of queer lives and histories and the cultural heritages that we carry with us.
In this edition’s part 1 is presented in partnership with
Queer East , where we will be screening the feature film Bye Bye Love (1974) at LAB111 Amsterdam 31/07.
Join us for a very special film accompanied by a panel talk with speakers Yi Wang, Andy Zhu and Maoyi, as well as an after drawing workshop with drinks!
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Drawing workshop Scene & Seen
‘Scene & Seen : A’ is a hands-on workshop that explores the concept of Asianness through the lens of Asian cinema, using film as a catalyst to examine and reinterpret cultural identity. Participants will engage with iconic scenes, objects, and moments from film to create experimental visual responses—doodles, sketches, and compositions—that reflect their impressions and lived experiences. As part of the Asian Movie Night Seasonal Festival, this session invites participants to reimagine the boundaries of Asianness through color, texture, and form, transforming fleeting cinematic images into personal visual definitions of culture.
PROGRAM of LAB111 Amsterdam
Thursday 31.07.2025
19:00 - 19:05 Intro
19:05 - 20:25 Screening of Bye Bye Love
20:25 - 21:00 Panel Talk
21:15 - 22:00 Drawing workshop & drinks at the Kappel
22:00 end
TICKETS
€ 13, - / Cineville card free
LAB111
ABOUT
Yi Wang is the founder, director, and programmer of Queer East, a festival dedicated to showcasing boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities. In addition to his work with Queer East, Yi is a cultural and creative producer in the performing arts, with a primary focus on marginalised voices and intercultural productions.
Yi has served as a jury member for several festivals, including the Iris Prize, MIX Copenhagen, Taiwan Women Make Waves Film Festival, and Taiwan International Queer Film Festival, and has delivered lectures, talks, and panels about festival programming, management and queer Asian cinema for various institutions. He is the co-founder of the Association of Curators and Programmers of Asian Cinemas.
Andy Zhu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media Studies and the School of Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. He is currently doing his PhD research, tentatively titled “Worlding Chinese Queer Cinema”, as part of the ERC-funded project “RESCUE: Resilient Cultures – Music, Art, and Cinema in Mainland China and Hong Kong”.
Through fieldwork at film festivals and screening events across Mainland China and Hong Kong, he focuses on contemporary Chinese queer cinema culture and its capacity for world-making. Additionally, he has volunteered at Queer East Film Festival, Beijing Love Queer Cinema Week, and Caochangdi Workstation Film Festival.
Maoyi Qiu is an artist and activist. They are a founding member of Q-Space, a queer feminist collective established in Beijing, China (2016–2020), and were part of the Fellowship for Situated Practice (October 2023 – June 2024) at BAK, Utrecht. Since 2022, they have been working within the framework of Soupspoon Collective, an artist collective based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Maoyi’s recent research explores archiving and activist fatigue, resulting in a physical reading room—a collection of East and Southeast Asian self-publishing—and a multidisciplinary archive that engages with the intersections of the Chinese queer feminist movement, translocal resistance, and somatic activism.
Curator
Kleopatra Vorria is an artist that deals in stories. Her favorite movie last month was Flow (2024)
Supported by
Arnhem Gemeente, Het Cultuurfonds and Asian Pride
Bye Bye Love
Isao Fujisawa | 1974 | Japan | 85’
Japanese w/ English subs
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This is the
only full-length feature film made at his own expense by Isao Fujisawa, who was
an assistant director at Toei at the time, having worked on Hiroshi
Teshigahara's “Woman in the Dunes” and “The Face of Others”. Influenced by pop
art, and the French New Wave, this is a unique love story of an outlaw couple's
escapades when faced with the faded promises of their counterculture era. A
bizarre world created by the dazzling primary colors and psychedelic images of
the 1970s, Utamaro and Giiko wander in search of freedom, liberation and
transformation. Where will they end up?
With a
theme that was ahead of its time, this is a hidden gem of independent film made
on the tails of Japanese New Wave, showing the first traces of a new queer
cinema. The film had been long considered lost, but in 2018 the original
negative was discovered in a warehouse and a new print was made.
Isao Fujisawa -
Isao Fujisawa was born December 17, 1941 in Kamaishi City, Iwate Prefecture. While a university student, he worked as an assistant director on Hiroshi Teshigawara's “Woman in the Dunes” (1964) and “The Face of Other” (1966), before going on to work under Toei in Yakuza films directed by Yasuo Furuhata. In 1972, he left the Toei label to write and direct “Bye Bye Love'”, his only feature film to date, after which he has worked as a television documentary director to varying success.
