The Projector | Why there are still so few Chinese female directors: one woman is on a mission to change the narrative

While studying at Beijing’s Communication University of China, Yang Jing signed up for a series of seminars on feminism and filmmaking. When she arrived for the first session, the audience numbered a mere 11 – from a student population of more than 13,000.

Yang remembers how the participants, her­self included, struggled to keep up with what the speakers were saying: “We were at a loss about all the concepts and theories we had just heard of for the first time.”

That was in 2006. Since then, Yang says, things have changed. Having established The One International Women’s Film Festival, in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in 2017, the only officially sanctioned event of its kind in the main­land, she was invited last month to deliver a talk at her alma mater about her experience. In a packed auditorium, Yang discovered a well-informed audience with their own per­spectives about gender-related issues.

“There was a lot of interaction and exchange of ideas, and it reflects the way society has progressed,” she says.