Cui Zi'en

Cui Zi'en, born 1958 in Harbin in the People's Republic of China, is a film director, producer, film scholar, screenwriter, novelist and an outspoken LGBT activist based in Beijing. He holds an MA in literature from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and is an associate professor at the Film Research Institute of the Beijing Film Academy. Working as one of the avant-garde DV makers in Chinese underground film, he has published nine novels in China and Hong Kong, one of which, Uncle's Past, won the 2001 Radio Literature Award in Germany. In that same year he founded the Beijing Queer Film Festival, the first LGBT film festival in mainland China, giving queer Chinese cinema an ongoing public venue. He also writes criticism and theory and works as a magazine columnist.