6TH EDITION ★ 28 FEBRUARY - 30 MARCH 2025
★ GHENT ★
Talk & Docu
Roundtable: Queerness in China
Learn about queerness in the People's Republic of China during our Roundtable with experts Kika Man, Huang Haiyan and Yu Liang-Kai, moderated by activist, researcher and documentary producer Stijn Deklerck. This talk is followed by a screening of the documentary 'Last Year of Darkness' by Benjamin Mullinkosson.
Documentary: The Last Year of Darkness
'The Last Year of Darkness' revolves around a small club called Funky Town, the go-to party space for a group of twenty-year-old DJ’s, drag performers, lovers, ravers and skaters in China. In this unassuming corner bar hidden by Chengdu’s construction cranes, five locals escape their stress, even if it’s only for the night. But as the sun rises and the cranes begin to move again, our protagonists are forced to face what brought them to the party in the first place.
KASKcinema
Wednesday 12 March
19:00 - Roundtable (in English)
20:30 - Documentary: 'Last Year of Darkness' (Mandarin with English subtitles)
Tickets on sale: Monday 3 February
€ 8 / € 4 (students)
Who's Who
Kika Man
Kika W. L. Van Robays 文詠玲 (they/them) is a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Department of Cultural and Religious Studies). They are from Belgium and from Hong Kong. Kika’s research with the tentative title, Queer/ing Zines: Practicing Transnational Collective Trans-Formation, focuses on zines, queer communities, and care and connections. Immersing themselves in solidarity and community care, they emphasise tenderness, platonic affections, and a constant sense of wonder above all. Kika is a poet and the author of Let the Mourning Come with Prolific Pulse LLC (2022) alongside many other published poems and book reviews. They are also one of the founders of Slam-T (spoken word and slam poetry platform). They have an MA in Chinese Language and Culture (Ghent University) and in Gender and Diversity Studies (Flemish joint university programme). You can find Kika on IG, Twitter, Bluesky, Substack, and WordPress through @kikawinling.
Haiyan Huang
Haiyan Huang, a PhD candidate at Ghent University. Her PhD project, researches how autonomous queer communities in mainland China engage in everyday world-building. Blending offline ethnographic fieldwork with digital ethnography, uncovering the stories, challenges, and opportunities that shape their lives. Beyond academia, Haiyan pours her passion into translating interesting queer studies texts from English to Chinese. Along with a friend, they are building a queer feminist community for Chinese-speaking diasporas in Belgium!
Liang-Kai Yu
Liang-Kai Yu (he/him) is a researcher, lecturer, and curator based in Rotterdam and Taipei, focusing on queer curatorial and artistic practices. His academic writings have been featured in Sexualities and the Journal of Material Culture, and he has shared his research at Kanal Pompidou Brussels, Centre Pompidou Paris, Winterthur Fotomuseum, among others. In 2022, he co-founded Limestone Books Maastricht, an art publishing space dedicated to underrepresented voices.
Stijn Deklerck
Stijn Deklerck holds a master’s degree in law and obtained his PhD in sinology with a visual ethnographic study of queer activism in China. He worked at various Chinese and international NGOs, taught Chinese law and politics at the universities of Leuven and Liège, and is an experienced documentary producer. Since 2018, he has been working as a senior human rights project officer at Amnesty International Netherlands.
ABOUT THE FILM
Last Year of Darkness 午夜出走
Benjamin Mullinkosson
2023
'The Last Year of Darkness' revolves around a small club called Funky Town, the go-to party space for a group of twenty-year-old DJ’s, drag performers, lovers, ravers and skaters in China. In this unassuming corner bar hidden by Chengdu’s construction cranes, five locals
escape their stress, even if it’s only for the night. But as the sun rises and the cranes begin to move again, our protagonists are forced to face what brought them to the party in the first place.
95 min
Language: Mandarin
Subtitles: English
About the Director
This is Ben Mullinkosson’s second feature length documentary and 6th year coming back to Chengdu. He speaks Chinese. His first feature 'Don't Be a Dick About It' won the 2018 Audience Award at IDFA and is being distributed by Oscilloscope. He now works directing commercials and music videos. His works include Cannes Silver Lion Advertising award, Vimeo Staff Picks, NYT
Op-Docs, and some of his films have millions of views. His previous short films have gotten into 50+ festivals around the world including Tribeca ('Gnarly in Pink') and Slamdance ('What I Hate About Myself').
Watch the trailer
Director's Statement
'The Last Year of Darkness' is a coming-of-age documentary about five of the friends I made while drinking and dancing in the underground party scene in Chengdu, China. The film is a celebration of life and a love letter to this wonderful community I’ve been so lucky to be a part of.
This film is really personal to me. Funkytown is where I go to escape my problems, even if only for the night. It’s the epicenter of the underground community in Chengdu where everyone who doesn’t fit into conventional society can feel wild and free. Funkytown has saved our lives. Techno music has saved our lives. My goal for this project was to create a portrait of a temporary utopia and share this intimate space with a larger audience.
I connect deeply with the journeys of my main characters and I hope that folks all around the world will too. Battling depression, questioning your sexuality, the exhaustion that comes from living as an artist, the struggles you face just trying to keep the lights on: these issues have played a part in the defining moments of my life thus far and they’re central to the coming of age stories of each character in the documentary.
By the end of the film, this magical era of Funkytown has come to an end. For reasons out of our protagonists’ control, they have all been pushed into the next stage of their life and this film is meant to be a time capsule dedicated to all of the Funkytown emotion of the past. I hope that audiences will be pleasantly surprised by how much they can relate to each character in the film and I hope they can feel the level of intimacy and vulnerability present on screen.
