Documentary --- The Two Lives of Li Ermao Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Dec 1 2019

Location: 

China

The documentary film "The Two Lives of Li Ermao" recorded the bumpy life experience of a transgender Li Ermao and her unique and moving story.
"Others only live one life, I live two." Looking back, the "two lives" are not only the emotional disillusionment and the swing of identity that Li Ermao has experienced in the past 17 years, but also her helpless but accurate summary of her life.

Director Jia Yuchuan is 60 years old this year and is a photographer. He has been photographing the lives of sexual minorities in Shenzhen since 2002. Li Ermao is one of his subjects. For seventeen years, images have kept them in intermittent contact, and Jia Yuchuan has become the person who knows Ermao's traces best. Ermao often goes to other places to perform, has no fixed place, and always changes her mobile phone number, but she regards Jia Yuchuan as her "brother" and contacts him most.

In 2019, Li Ermao, who had HIV, passed away at home.

Posted by Mingke Zhao on

Staff rating: 

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Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Timeframe For change

The film is already done but I think the influence would be longer. Clearly, it tells the difficulty of Chinese transgenders, which is a really big social topic that needs the concern of not only artists but also the whole society. And it needs much time to change.

Notes

Transgenders is a kind of invisible group in current Chinese society. Whether good or not, the documentary made this group visible, and I think it is the first step to improve the social environment.