Feeding Boys, Ayaya
Cui Zien
Release year: 2003
Run time: 80 min
Film type: Fiction
Synopsis
Xiao Bo comes from a middle-class family. However, he has decided earn a living as a rent boy. His older brother, Dabin, is an evangelical Christian determined to reform China’s entire sex worker population. When the two clash, Xiao Bo walks out and disappears onto the streets. As Dabin searches for his brother, he meets, befriends and tries to convert many male sex workers. However, he gradually becomes aware that, to these men, their work is neither dishonourable nor stigmatizing—a realization that stuns Dabin. Feeding Boys, Ayaya blends documentary and drama in its consideration of contemporary Chinese sex work.
Director biography
Cui Zi’en (born Heilongjiang, 1958) is a film director, essayist, and novelist. He became known in the 1990s as an outspoken queer activist. He is known as an avant-garde underground director in China. His notable films about homosexuality include the documentary Queer China, Comrade China (2009), which deals with changes in Chinese LGBT culture over the last 30 years. He has written books on theory and criticism as well as publishing nine novels in China and Hong Kong, one of which, Uncle’s Past, won the 2001 Radio Literature Award in Germany. He also taught at the Beijing Film Academy.