Capturing China's gay heart: Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan talks about Lan Yu, his lyrical gay love story set and filmed in supposedly repressive China. (film).

"The reason that I announced my sexuality was that I felt that as a creator at that, stage, it would be better for me if I became honest with the public rather than trying to hide. When you're young you might as well have a good time and not, think too much. But when you are older you want to have a commitment to things, and the only way to do that is to be yourself, to come out, rather than pretend."

So says director Stanley Kwan, whose new gay love story, Lan Yu, comes to American audiences this summer. When Kwan shocked Hong Kong by coming out, he was already established as one of the city's best filmmakers, esteemed for his finely tuned aesthetics and perfectly realized tragic heroines. Asked to do a documentary for the British Film Institute's Century of Cinema series, Kwan boldly turned the exercise into Yin and Yang: Gender in Chinese Cinema, an open meditation on his own gay identity as traced through Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Chinese movies. And lest there be any doubt how personal this all was, Kwan's mother even appears on-screen, proudly chatting with her son about the films she saw while he was still in the womb.

Kwan's new film, Lan Yu, his first gay narrative, is a love story between a closeted middle-aged businessman and the poor student he hires for sex. Kwan manages to create an emotional resonance that doesn't so much transcend the story as amplify it to encompass everyone's sense of hope and loss. "Something about the story really touched me," admits Kwan. "I reviewed it many times, and it made me want to talk to my boyfriend of 10 years, William. And because it made me want to talk to him, all of a sudden I became passionate about the story and committed to do it."

Lan Yu has its source in Beijing Story, a novel that was written anonymously by a Chinese woman in memory of her good friend, whose life and great love it recounts. It circulated in installments on the Internet in China and was so popular with China's gay subcultures that the novel's characters became pan of chat-room exchanges. The phenomenon came to the attention of Zhang Yongning, a London-based actor and producer. Zhang laid siege to Kwan, who finally agreed to work with him and shoot the film in Beijing.

Clearly, it's a misconception to think that such a film could never be made there. It can--at least if the financing comes from Hong Kong. "Hundreds of good actors came for the audition," says Kwan, "without worrying about the film's subject or my sexuality--just because they believed that a good director plus a good story makes a good film. People tried their hardest to be cast. In Hong Kong actors would have been worried about their image if they took a gay part. In China nobody cared about that, only about its being a good part."

Kwan says the experience has changed him. "I used to always say that Hong Kong was the most civilized and open-minded territory in all of China, but actually it's the most conservative," he points out. "People say, `Oh, Stanley, you're so brave!' But what do they say behind my back?"

His producer agrees: "In Hong Kong, now that he's out, colleagues identify him as a gay director. But in China people see him as a film director, without regard to his sexuality."

While the media in Hong Kong and Taiwan have been printing reports of a China Film Bureau crackdown on actors who took part in making Lan Yu, Kwan wants to set the record straight. The bureau took no action other than to remind Lan Yu's two male leads to work in the future with Hong Kong filmmakers who have a license to film in China. In fact, Kwan wants to go back, and so does his Hong Kong financier. "I've formed a company with one of the Lan Yu producers," Kwan says. "It's called Purple Light and will produce young filmmakers in China."

In the meantime he's taking meetings in Los Angeles.

Rich is international programmer of the 2002 Toronto Film Festival.