react/review: a responsive journal for art & architecture

Founded in 2001 by Chinese film director Cui Zi’en and students from Beijing University, the Beijing Queer Film Festival (BQFF) is China's longest-running independent film festival centered on queer media and visual culture. In this article, I approach the BQFF by focusing on the issue of queer visibility, a particular mode of queer self-manifestation that fluctuates between the states of concealment and disclosure—a contingent condition of existence that undergirds how sexual minorities in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) negotiate and navigate power despite their culturally and politically constricted existence. I explore how the Festival contributes to disrupting state power without using overtly aggressive tactics. I argue that the astonishing longevity achieved by the BQFF organizers necessitates further scholarly attention to the cultural and political efficacy of an ambiguous queer visibility as enacted by the Festival tactics.