The Chinese Independent Film Foundation (CIFF) is a
not-for-profit screen culture organisation dedicated
to showcasing new and old art-house Chinese-language
cinema across Australia. Founded in Narrm/Melbourne,
CIFF works with collaborators across mainland China,
Hong Kong and Taiwan to present films that
rarely receive theatrical release locally.

ARTICLE | Words by William Duan

Thoughts on East Palace, West Palace


“Fantasy and the performance of desire play a central role in the film East Palace, West Palace – through fantasy, Zhang Yuan ultimately captures a reality of queerness in ‘90s China, a time when homosexuality faced severe societal and legal repression. The film plays out on the knife’s edge of binaries, firstly through the dichotomy presented in its title: East and West – and then reverberating throughout the rest of the film; night and day, freedom and repression, exterior performance and hidden interiority.” READ MORE.

William Duan (he/they) is an award-winning filmmaker based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. They are inspired by deeply human stories from the diaspora. Learn more about William’s work here.

This piece was especially commissioned by CIFF to celebrate the Foundation’s Focus on Queer 中文 Cinema program. 
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CIFF acknowledges the Traditional Owners of
the unceded land on which we work and create,
the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong
peoples, and the wider Kulin Nations.