Liao Zhang from the University of Nottingham has been selected to join UK-China Film Collab as a member via the organisation’s Future Talent Programme 2021-2022.

Here is Liao’s introduction to herself and her project for this year:

“Hi. I am Liao Zhang, currently a 4th year PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. My research interests include Chinese and Western (post)feminism, girl’s culture and Chinese girlhood cinema, female (inter)subjectivity and female spectatorship, digital feminist activism and online misogyny, neoliberalism and affirmative visual aesthetics in contemporary Chinese cinema. My academic background is an interdisciplinary one, combining Film Production (China), Special Effect and Sci-fi Films (South Korea), European Studies (KCL, UK), Global Cinema and the Transcultural Studies (SOAS, UK) as well as Film and Television Studies with a specialization of Feminist Theory (UoN, UK). Beyond my PhD work, I am an Associate Teaching Fellow for several media and film studies courses at the University of Nottingham since 2019. I have also worked as a journalist and have written/directed my own award-winning micro-films.

It is a great honour for me to join the UK China Film Collab as Lead Women’s Film Programme Curator through the Future Talent Programme 2021-2022. This year, the project I proposed for UCFC is a feminist film screening programme that involves international cooperation with both Chinese and UK feminist film festivals such as The One International Women’s Film Festival in China, and the UnderWire Festival in London. Through this collaboration, I hope to increase the international visibility of these underrepresented Chinese female filmmakers and bring their work to the UK and wider overseas audiences. Since films which associate gender issues and feminist topics have increasingly become a transnational culture that can be sold, consumed, and interpreted across international borders.

As part of this project, I will also organise a series of industry forums and academic symposiums that focus on the working status of female filmmakers in both countries. These events will serve as a bridge for these women filmmakers from the two countries to explore opportunities for further collaboration, developing projects, obtaining investment, and bringing the finished films to the Chinese and British film markets.”

Liao also serves as Lead of Public Relations for Odyssey: a Chinese cinema season 2022, an annual film festival presented by UK-China Film Collab.

Contact Liao: liao.zhang@ukchinafilm.uk