This conversation, originally conducted in Chinese, explores the role of films, movie theaters, screens, streaming platforms, and documentary filmmaking in China during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Zhang Zhen and Jiang Jiehong—professors at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and Birmingham City University, UK, respectively—discuss the human rights movement prompted by state-sanctioned racist violence, feminist interventions in filmmaking practices, documentation of the pandemic in China, and tensions between state discourse and minjian (unofficial, unaffiliated, grassroots, and among-the-people) narratives.