*This screening will be followed by a remote Q&A with the director Niu Xiaoyu.

Virgin Blue tells the story of a college graduate who returns home for summer vacation, but finds herself sinking into her childhood memories, as well as the memories of her grandmother, which begin to take on actual forms in life.

Dancing with water: women’s cinema from contemporary China is a film season (Feb-April 2024) curated and programmed by Kiki Tianqi Yu and Shan Tong, with funding support from the Centre for Public Engagement, Queen Mary University of London, and in partnership with the Garden Cinema, BLOC, Bertha DocHouse, Sine Screen and Queen East Festival. The screenings at the Garden Cinema are supported by The Chinese Cinema Project.

The season captures a burgeoning energy of fluidity, flexibility and resilience of Chinese women filmmakers and their cinemas, resonating with the Daoist concept of yin and water as not only soft and formless but also pervasive and tenacious. For more please check out www.dancingwithwaterfilm.com