Happily Ever After
He Xiaopei
Release year: 2019
Run time: 37 min
Film type: Documentary
Synopsis
Contract marriage is commonly practiced among lesbian and gay communities in China, to alleviate social and family pressure.
In 2011, in the city of Shengyang, in northeast China, four lesbian women married gay men. Six years later, we visited these four lesbian women. Happily Ever After recorded what the lesbian women had to say about their relationships with their lovers, parents, and gay husbands.
Director biography
Hills trained me to be a shepherd and the Himalayas turned me into a mountaineer. A government job made me an economist while the women's movement converted me into a feminist. Participating in lesbian organizing in China helped me realize that people with disabilities, HIV positive women, sex workers and lesbians married to gay men are particularly oppressed and that their voices are mostly silenced. In 2007, I co-founded ‘Pink Space’, an NGO working with people who are marginalized due to their gender and sexuality. We use photos and films to enable people to tell their life stories, to gain power and to represent their desires and experiences.