Fish and Elephant

Fish and Elephant (2001)

今年夏天

A lesbian deals with her former girlfriend and a divorced mother who wants her to meet men.

Date of release
2001-09-01
TMDB
4.0 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Romance, Drama
Director
Li Yu

Casting

Interesting facts

Fish and Elephant is documentary filmmaker and former TV hostess Li Yu's feature film directorial debut. The film is also often referred to as the first mainland Chinese film to broach the topic of lesbian relationships in China.

Production

Filmed on an almost-square 16 mm format, Fish and Elephant was the first feature film by Li Yu, who had previously directed several documentaries, including 1997's Sisters, a film which had run into state interference.

Casting by Li Yu was done entirely with non-professionals. The two leads, Xiaoqun (Pan Yi) and Xiaoling (Shitou), were cast after Li began visiting various lesbian bars in Beijing. Similarly, several of the film's "blind dates" were based on actual dates set up by Li through classified ads. The men's reactions upon Xiaoqun revealing her sexual orientation therefore are entirely natural and accurate.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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