Meat and Three Veg
Cui Zien
Release year: 2008
Run time: 84 min
Film type: Documentary
Synopsis
A documentary pastiche about living in contemporary China, constituted by images of immigrant workers’ on-street KTV singing; open-air community dancing parties; the campus life and extracurricular activities of high school and college students; the job of killing mosquitoes done by children of migrant workers; fragments of gay love stories; the wedding of a film director; as well as a farmer coming from their hometown to Beijing, kneeling on a flyover seeking justice. This documentary film is intended to present a kaleidoscopic view of everyday life in contemporary China.
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.