Matthew Baren

In June 2023, seven young, queer Chinese signed up for a performance art project in East London. In this month-long community art project, they would learn about what is drag and how to perform it, discover their queer Chinese heritage, and explore ways to de-westernise and decolonise drag. The training was hard but also fun. Most nerve-wracking of all, they would put on a live show in front of an audience. On a roller-coaster journey of self-discovery, they would find out about what their identity, community and politics means to drag.

The story of the six Chinese survivors of the Titanic disaster was written out of history. In The Six, we learn how these remarkable men beat the odds to make it off the ship alive, only to be singled out for expulsion from the US within 24 hours of their arrival. We track down their descendants for the first time. And we trace their extraordinary journey from Southern China to becoming silent witnesses to one of the twentieth century’s most infamous and intriguing events.

Feel the shade, live the fantasy. A new documentary about the Shanghai drag scene.

Feel the shade, live the fantasy. A new documentary about the Shanghai drag scene.

An unnamed woman encounters three different people over the course of a day in Shanghai. Presenting herself as a blank canvas, she invites them to project their expectations onto her, performing the role they assign for her, before violently disrupting their worlds. Loosely inspired on Muriel Spark's metaphysical feminist novella, The Driverr is a meditation on gender, sexuality and social identity.

An unnamed woman encounters three different people over the course of a day in Shanghai. Presenting herself as a blank canvas, she invites them to project their expectations onto her, performing the role they assign for her, before violently disrupting their worlds. Loosely inspired on Muriel Spark's metaphysical feminist novella, The Driverr is a meditation on gender, sexuality and social identity.

In the months that follow the seventy-day citywide covid lockdown, three couples in Shanghai meet to talk, and to manifest their traumas in acts of fantastical violence.

In the months that follow the seventy-day citywide covid lockdown, three couples in Shanghai meet to talk, and to manifest their traumas in acts of fantastical violence.

In Shanghai in the early 90s, a high school girl's choir achieved brief fame for their singing talents on the national stage. They were the promise of youth in a time of change, when society was transforming as rapidly as the city, and traditional ideas of the role of women were giving way to new possibilities for girls like them. Thirty years later, the now middle-aged friends reunite for the first time in decades to share their stories, tears and laughter, and to reflect on what being a woman can mean.

The last days of M on the Bund, the restaurant that reinvented fine-dining in Shanghai, and its maverick founder Michelle Garnaut. A remarkable three-decade journey in China’s global city, from the changing geo-politics of the new millennium, to the importance of food and community in challenging times.

An identity, a burden, an escape, a symbol. The simplest thing we can share with others is our name, but it can also be one of the most complex. In this short documentary, a group of trans and queer people tell the stories of their names, and ask us to consider how a few simple words are meant to contain our whole person.