Chinese, female filmmakers through a feminist lens

The Chinese film industry is enormous, but the number of female directors is lagging behind. How does this small group represent feminist narratives in their films? Are they more present than in films by male directors? On 12 January, Fan Yang will obtain a doctorate for her PhD thesis about the topic. They are not often seen in Dutch cinemas, but Chinese films belong to one of the largest film industries in the world. In 2020, the Chinese film world was the first industry ever to overtake Hollywood in terms of box office revenue: this amounted to 3 billion dollars. In spite of this large scale, the number of female directors of feature-length films in mainland China is low: there were about 62 at the helm of films released between 2000 and 2020. Media scholar Fan Yang also noted that little attention is devoted to these women in research into Chinese cinema. Yang also doesn't know precisely how small the share of female directors is.