The Returning Tide
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The Returning Tide
— the story continues here.
About The Returning Tide
The film revisits more than twenty feminist activists from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China to trace the lasting impact of the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing across East Asia. It follows the connections forged during the conference, examines the institutional frameworks of gender mainstreaming, and explores the rise of the queer movement and digital rights alongside the backlash these activists now face.
Through these intertwined stories, the film continually asks what sustains such struggles and how feminist movements persist, transform, and evolve across generations and regions.
The 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women
is remembered as the largest gathering of women in history.
Thirty years later, its footage is revisited not only as a pinnacle of women’s activism, but as a rare point of reference—one that allows us to reconsider how “womanhood” has been narrated, erased, and passed on.
Standing again at this juncture, we ask those who were present, those who have departed, and those who came after: what legacy does this conference leave behind?
History has never moved in a straight line. In the thirty years that followed the World Conference on Women, the social climate grew increasingly constrained. Public discourse was rewritten, and many organisations were compelled to take on more covert forms.
Yet action never disappeared.
It persisted—
from the streets to the screens,
from the public square to quiet networks of care,
from overt resistance to the quiet resilience that endures within the cracks.
Between Generations:
Fault Lines and Conversations
The movement has not ended;
it has merely changed its language—
continuing across generations to find new ways to be heard.
Thirty years ago
—if time could turn back.
What would you do?
We would like to invite you to leave your trace, and share your story with us about the World Conference on Women.
About Drift Collective
A dispersed feminist-queer collective that grows wildly anew, weaving transnational and intergenerational ties through image and text to witness and empower one another.