Shanghai native Violet Du Feng is known for creating multifaceted, intimate films that explore China's deeply complex social issues. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, her credits include Harbor from the Holocaust and Please Remember Me, which led to China’s first documentary impact campaign and government policy improvements for senior dementia care.

In this episode of Asians in Art, we discuss her latest film, The Dating Game. The movie premiered at Sundance 2025 as a Grand Jury Prize nominee and is now streaming on PBS. The documentary follows three rural bachelors on an intensive dating camp against the backdrop of China’s gender imbalance—a legacy of the one-child policy. We also explore Hidden Letters, her Oscar-shortlisted and Peabody-nominated film about Nüshu, the secret script created by women ...