Beijing filmmaker Fan Popo is all over the media, following the news that a Beijing court has accepted his lawsuit against censors that took down his popular 2012 documentary titled Mama Rainbow, which follows mothers of gay children throughout China. The film documents mothers’ responses to their children coming out and their unconditional love and support for their children; some mothers are positive from the very beginning, while others’ talk about their transformation and change of attitude.
 

Fan’s 30-minute long documentary was previously available on many Chinese video streaming platforms, namely Youku, Tudou, and 56.com, getting huge amounts of hits and receiving comments and reviews from people from all walks of life, both positive and negative. We sat down to talk to him about the situation with his current documentary, struggles for filmmakers, and his future plans.

“At the end of last year [2014], a friend of mine asked me for a link so that his friend could watch Mama Rainbow, however, I could not find it. So I checked the different websites, which all said that the content was blocked because it did not follow the rules” Fan told us.

After getting in touch with 56.com, Fan was told that they had received documentation from the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), telling them to delete the documentary from their website.

“I applied for information disclosure from SARFT at the end of February, and got a reply at the beginning of March, saying that they do not have this document, and that they did not censor my film. I felt very puzzled, I couldn’t figure out who was lying to me, so in the beginning of September I decided to file a lawsuit against SARFT.”

The reason behind the documentary’s removal remains unclear. Fan says that he “can only guess why the documentary was taken down. There are still a lot of documentaries with queer topics available online on all of those websites. Some are much more sexual or much more violent than mine, mine is very harmonious.”

“From what my friends and I are guessing, it’s that maybe because the video has been there for a long time and has a lot of people reviewing it, it has drawn a lot of attention. Also, it is a documentary and so based on fact rather than fiction, but we don’t really know, we can only guess.” Whether Mama Rainbow will be available again on these websites remains unclear; last year a 30-year-old man won a court case against a clinic that told him he required shock treatment for his homosexuality. “I hope the documentary will be available again soon, and also all the reviews. It got almost 1 million hits, and a lot of comments that are also very valuable. Some of them are supportive, some of them are in the other direction, but no matter what they are opinions from people who watched my documentary. As a filmmaker, this is important to me, as well as for other people facing similar challenges,” Fan says.

Regardless of what happens, Fan will not stop at Mama Rainbow. For over a year, he has been stepping out of his comfort zone and working on Papa Rainbow, as requested by his many fans at film screenings. “I have been working with six fathers from all over China. In the beginning I was a little bit scared because when we were working on Mama Rainbow, I was very happy that I didn’t need to work with the fathers, because I am usually not very good at communicating with straight men, but these fathers have really given me a new idea on Chinese men. I have really enjoyed working with the fathers, they are really open-minded.”

Fan estimates that Papa Rainbow will be finished at the end of this year, and whether or not it will face the same fate as Mama Rainbow on the Chinese Internet is uncertain. Undoubtedly, though, the documentary will attract a lot of attention from Fan’s fans, as he shows how many parents love their children unconditionally, regardless of sexuality.

Photos: Sui