{"id":492,"date":"2009-11-25T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T05:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dontow.com\/wordpress\/?p=492"},"modified":"2009-11-27T23:35:23","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T04:35:23","slug":"audience-reactions-to-the-film-autumn-gem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/2009\/11\/audience-reactions-to-the-film-autumn-gem\/","title":{"rendered":"Audience Reactions to the Film “Autumn Gem” on Qiu Jin (\u79cb\u747e)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the August 2009 issue of this website, we reported on a new documentary film “Autumn Gem” about the life story of Qiu Jin (\u79cb\u747e), China’s first feminist.[1]\u00a0 This film was made by a young couple from California, Rae Chang and Adam Tow, who dedicated one and a half years of their young lives and used their limited savings to produce this film.\u00a0 In the last several months, they have held a series of special screenings of their film around the country.\u00a0 For example, during a span of 23 days in October 2009, they had 17 screenings in 16 cities spanning the midwest and northeast, and for each screening Rae and Adam also participated in a Q&A session with the audience.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The audience receptions from all these screenings were extremely positive.\u00a0 I personally attended four of these screenings, in NJ, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Since Qiu Jin is a historical figure and played a significant role in modern Chinese history and her life history still has relevance in today’s world, I want to summarize some of the key comments and questions from the audiences of these screenings, as well as Rae and Adam’s responses.<\/p>\n

“What made you decide to make a film on Qiu Jin?” <\/strong>Many years earlier, <\/strong>Rae read a book that mentioned a radical female feminist in China from about a hundred years ago.\u00a0 She was intrigued, because she didn’t think that a hundred years ago in China, there was a female feminist, let alone a radical female feminist.\u00a0 So she did some research on this and became fascinated with Qiu Jin.\u00a0 Several years ago, Rae actually made a short film (about 10 minutes long) on Qiu Jin.\u00a0 Periodically, people would comment to her “why don’t you make a full-feature film on Qiu Jin?”\u00a0 So in 2007 after discussion with Adam, they decided to do this project.
\n<\/strong><\/li>\n
“Why does the film call Qiu Jin China’s first feminist, and not Modern China’s first feminist?”<\/strong> Although there were many famous heroines in China’s long history, including Qiu Jin’s childhood heroines such as Mulan, Qiu Jin and her colleagues were the first to attempt to emancipate women as a group and brought attention to the women’s movement to a national level.\u00a0 In other words, she went beyond being a great individual heroine and a role model, but was the first Chinese female who tried to educate, mobilize, and organize other women into a political force to change woman’s role in society.<\/li>\n
“What was the most difficult aspect of making this film?” <\/strong>It was probably the scheduling and simultaneous management of a multitude of activities.\u00a0 Let’s give an example.\u00a0 Originally we were planning to do the filming in China during our visit to China in February and March 2008.\u00a0 Almost at the last minute, we found out that Li Jing, the leading actress who played Qiu Jin, could no longer make the trip due to changes in her other film commitments in the U.S.\u00a0 So we had to change the filming location, most of the filming schedule, and recruiting of standby actors and actresses..<\/li>\n
“This is an excellent film and should be exposed to many more people.\u00a0 Have you tried to get it shown on TV?” <\/strong>Yes, we are working on that.\u00a0 In particular, we are trying to get it shown on San Francisco’s public TV channel.<\/li>\n
“This is a good film that can be submitted to film festivals.\u00a0 Have you done that?” <\/strong>Yes, we have submitted it to several film festivals, but so far it has been rejected each time, including film festivals that focus on Asian American films or films made by Asian Americans.\u00a0 Usually these film festivals prefer contemporary documentaries over historical documentaries.\u00a0 Furthermore, it seems that a door opener for acceptance is whether the film has been shown in some other film festivals.\u00a0 So if we can get it accepted in one film festival, then it will be much easier to get it accepted in other film festivals.\u00a0 We will continue to pursue this.<\/li>\n
This film should also be shown in China.\u00a0 Has that been done? <\/strong>Not yet, although we did receive an indirect invitation to show our film at a conference in China.\u00a0 That conference date happened to be on the same date as our already committed screening in New Jersey.\u00a0 Furthermore, to show the film to an audience in China, we would need to add Chinese subtitles when the dialogue is in English.\u00a0 We do plan to do that, but we haven’t done it yet.\u00a0 For these reasons, we have not shown the film in China yet.<\/li>\n
Was Qiu Jin a nationalist or a feminist? <\/strong>Qiu Jin was both.\u00a0 As stated earlier, Qiu Jin was not satisfied with being just a female role model.\u00a0 She wanted also to mobilize and organize Chinese women into a political force to effect changes in woman’s role in the Chinese society.\u00a0 To carry out her feminist agenda, she needed to make the feminist movement part of the nationalist movement occurring in China in the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th century.\u00a0 That is why Qiu Jin was both a nationalist and a feminist.<\/li>\n
“What happened to Qiu Jin’s two children?” <\/strong>Qiu Jin’s daughter (1901-1967) was Wang Canzhi (Wang was her father’s surname).\u00a0 Later she changed her surname to Qiu (her mother’s surname).\u00a0 When Qiu Jin left her for Japan, she was only 2 years old.\u00a0 She stayed in Beijing with her mother’s friend.\u00a0 A few years later when she was very ill, her father took her to Hunan to live with her grandmother and brother.\u00a0 However, her grandmother disliked her and the little girl had a very hard time there.\u00a0 She became more and more like her mother when she grew up.\u00a0 She wrote poems and did physical exercise regularly.\u00a0 In 1918 when she was 17 years old, she went to the U.S. to study\u00a0 aircraft engineering.\u00a0 After graduation, she was appointed professor at a Chinese university.\u00a0 In 1927 she was invited to be the principal of Jin Xong School, which was named after her mother.\u00a0 After 1949 she went to Taiwan.\u00a0 She was Qiu Jin’s biographer and authored the book “Biography of Qiu Jin.”\u00a0 Her daughter (Qiu Jin’s granddaughter) currently lives in the U.S.\u00a0 Qiu Jin’s son was Wang Yuante.\u00a0 He grew up with his grandmother.\u00a0 He later graduated from Chengfeng University and worked as a journalist and a middle school teacher.\u00a0 He remained in mainland China after 1949 and became Secretary of the Hunan Office for Research on Archives.<\/li>\n
“Was Qiu Jin a lesbian?”<\/strong> It is hard to say, although there is that possibility.\u00a0 It is true that Qiu Jin did not have a good and loving relationship with her husband and she was very close to many of her female activist friends, but that could be very natural, because her soul mates were her female activist friends, and not her husband.\u00a0 There is no direct evidence that she was a lesbian.<\/li>\n
“Since many people in the audience tonight said that they really like the film and wish more people would be able to see the film, let me suggest that we can help to publicize this film by buying a DVD of the film and show it to our relatives and friends.”<\/strong> Yes, we would really appreciate that kind of help.\u00a0 DVDs can be purchased via the Autumn Gem website: http:\/\/autumn-gem.com\/buy\/.\u00a0 [2]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Rae and Adam plan to have another round of screening of “Autumn Gem.”\u00a0 The next east coast tour is tentatively scheduled in late March of 2010.<\/p>\n
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[1] For more information about Qiu Jin and the film “Autumn Gem,” see the article “Qiu Jin (\u79cb\u747e):\u00a0 China’s First Feminist<\/a>” under the August 2009 Release of this website.<\/p>\n
[2] DVDs can also be purchased by contacting me via an email to don@tow.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the August 2009 issue of this website, we reported on a new documentary film “Autumn Gem” about the life story of Qiu Jin (\u79cb\u747e), China’s first feminist.[1]\u00a0 This film was made by a young couple from California, Rae Chang and Adam Tow, who dedicated one and a half years of their young lives and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":45,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}