Friction (2024)
Yuqi, a closeted transgender woman in China faces a harrowing choice: risk social abandonment by embracing her true self, or endure the mental strain of remaining invisible to stay safe.
Short Documentary, 21mins, China, U.K., Director
Trailer:
Friction (2024) is a short experimental documentary uncovering the social erasure and segregation of trans identities, the ‘friction’ in body conceptualization. The film features Yuqi Zhang, a closeted transgender woman in her 30s living in mainland China, as she navigates these challenges firsthand. Yuqi faces a harrowing choice: risk social abandonment by embracing her true self or endure the mental strain of remaining invisible to stay safe. She strives to balance familial expectations, societal constraints imposed on her body and choices, her growing gender dysphoria and depressive symptoms, and her pursuit of a happy and fulfilling life.
Director’s Statement
As a transgender lesbian from mainland China, exploring the fluid complexities of gender has been central to understanding my identity and place within a world of intersecting cultures and identities. Friction is a deeply personal project that reflects my commitment to uncover queer experiences in different intersectional spaces and cultures, particularly amplifying trans voices in China.
This documentary examines the intersection of gender, cultural norms, and societal pressures, delving into the lived experiences of trans individuals navigating repression and erasure. To ensure safety, I employed AI to obscure identities, while experimenting with visual forms that challenge the hetero-cis gaze. By incorporating experimental techniques and rethinking how bodies and subjectivities are represented, I aim to express the segregation and resilience of trans lives.
Witnessing the courage of my trans community, including my own struggles, is both challenging and inspiring. My hope is that Friction fosters connection, deepens understanding, and sparks empathy for the shared and unique realities of trans lives.
Research & Process
Lecture on ‘Transgender Representation in Media’ for MA documentary film in London College of Communication. - May 2024
As part of the research, performative gender theories and theories on the boddies’ cultrual and social materialization from Judith Butler, was heavily engaged with, along with other gender studies scourses and readings such as mainland China feminism movements and LGBTQIA movements mobility. Inspiration for Mannequins sequences were sparked heavily from Butler’s work ‘Bodies that Matter’.
“There was a process by which mannequins, representations of human and inhuman at the same time, become an significant symbolic representation for the emergence of transgender subjectivity. It represents a brave step towards stepping away from the normalized gendered discourse, which produces and regulates what is allowed to be defined as ‘human,’ and steps into an unknown world where their humanness outside of that discourse is taken back into their own hands, with it, possibilities and their happiness…”
Pre-visualization & Conceptual Storyboard
