KISS OF THE RABBIT GOD

I was lucky enough to catch a special screening of KISS OF THE RABBIT GOD two years ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it. This beautiful short, written and directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, is a confession and a love letter to the queer Asian community. It blurs the line of fantasy and reality as it portrays an ordinary restaurant worker’s extraordinary sexual awakening. Andrew looked to his own Chinese heritage as an inspiration for this gorgeous film—the legend that inspired this fictional narrative short is the story of Tu’er Shen 兔儿神 (The Rabbit God), a Qing dynasty mythical god who was a Fujianese soldier executed for professing his love to another man, but ordained as the patron deity of gay love after the ruler of the underworld decided that his crime was one of love. At a time when Asian queerness receives little visibility on screen and Asian male bodies are constantly stigamized or devalued, Andrew set out to portray a story that, in his own words, “enriched our collective imagination of what queer Asian male love, sex and intimacy could aspire to be.”

—Mimi Li, Development Assistant