Red Dawns and A-Infoshop present

Film screening

Su-Hsian Chen (Taiwan): Lesbian Factory (56′, 2010)

and public discussion

In the documentary ‘Lesbian Factory’, the story of the female migrant workers from Philippines, who were fighting to get their unpaid salaries, is intertwined with the personal stories of lesbians, who were at the centre of this fight. Taiwanese company Fast Fame was one of the rare companies where the employed lesbian workers in intimate relationships were allowed to share the same sleeping areas. Unfortunately, in 2004, the company closed its branch in Taiwan, and moved to China, while failing to pay a three-month salary to the Taiwanese workers.

Today, migrant work holds up Philippines’s economy; a few million Philippine citizens work abroad. Most of the migrants are highly educated women, working in low-paid jobs as housewives, servants and nurses (of children and old people). Until recently, many female migrants in Taiwan worked in the industry. However, due to the moving of the industrial plants into the regions with cheaper working force, the working places in the industry are getting fewer.

The documentary demonstrates that the migrant experience is ambivalent for women: on the one hand, it enables them to bystep familial control and traditional conventions of the Catholic church; on the other, it throws them into the controlling and exploitative wheel of the employers and the companies’ management.

This film is one of the first in the line of the documentaries (screened in Infoshop in the next few months) touching upon the thematics of the class struggles in South-West Asia.

A public discussion is going to follow the screening of the film.

In English, Tagalon and Chinese with English subtitles.

Co-organization: A-Infoshop

Map of ACC Metelkova