Shitou (born 1969) is a Chinese activist, actress, filmmaker, multimedia artist,[1] and gay icon.
[4] In 2000, Shitou was featured on a Hunan Satellite Television talk show program called "Approaching Homosexuality."
[6] Scholar Tingting Wei points out that while Shitou’s ‘coming out’ was broadcast on television, cultural attitudes and the PRC viewed homosexuality as a crime and a mental disorder at the time.
[3] Shitou documented the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in her film We Are Here (2015), co-directed by Zhao Jing (赵静).
During the NGO Forum, international lesbian organizers connected to host fundraising workshops, movie screenings, discuss challenges, strategies for activism, and more.
[13] When the Public Security Bureau discovered that the film festival was happening on campus, they immediately intervened and put an end to the movie screenings.
Once again, Chinese authorities were alerted of the film festival, and they intervened to order attendees to evacuate the premises of Peking University.
However this time, key organizers like Shi Tou, Cui Zi’en, and Wan Yanhai had prepared a backup plan.
Using resources and financial support from Wan Yanhai’s organization, they shifted the film festival’s venue to “798”, an old factory that had no affiliation with the university.
With an educational background in the creative arts, and Shitou created many works in the fields of photography and oil painting, but when it came to filmmaking, she was self-taught.
[12] To bypass some of the censorship laws, organizers acquired and screened pirated versions of queer films from the black market and various unofficial channels.