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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20171128T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20171128T210000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20171108T203722Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171108T203722Z
UID:6268-1511893800-1511902800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening of "Plastic China" and Q&A with Director Wang Jiuliang
DESCRIPTION:After the screening\, Director Wang Jiuliang will attend via Skype for a Q&A with the audience moderated by Professor Zhang Ling of Boston College and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. The discussion will be interpreted by Canaan Morse\, a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Literature at Harvard.  \nAbout the Film: As the world’s biggest plastic waste importer\, China receives ten million tons per year from most of the developed countries around the world. With high external costs impacting the local environment and health\, these imports are reborn here in these plastic workshops into “recycled” raw materials for the appetite of China – the world factory. This waste is then exported back to where they came from with a new face such as manufactured clothing or toys. Following the daily lives of two families living in a typical plastic waste household-recycling workshop\, PLASTIC CHINA explores how this work of recycling plastic waste with their bare hands takes a toll not only on their health\, but also their own dilemma of poverty\, disease\, pollution and death. \nAbout the Director: Director of the award-winning documentary film BEIJING BESIEGED BY WASTE\, WANG Jiuliang graduated from the School of Cinematic Arts of the Communication University of China in 2007. From 2007 to 2008\, he finished a set of photographic works about Chinese traditional superstitions. He started investigating landfill pollution around Beijing in 2008\, and in 2011\, finished BEIJING BESIEGED BY WASTE\, a set of photographic works and a documentary with the same name. Since 2012\, he has been working on and promoting the documentary PLASTIC CHINA. \nBoston-area premiere co-sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy\, Economy and Environment\, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Environment in Asia Series\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies; and Emergent Visions Film Screening Series\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. \nFree admission to the film screening is made possible through the generous support of the Harvard Global Institute. 
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-of-plastic-china-and-qa-with-director-wang-jiuliang/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Emergent Visions Film Screening,Environment,Environment,Events of Interest,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180320T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180320T180000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20180221T140439Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180221T140439Z
UID:6681-1521561600-1521568800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening - China's Van Goghs
DESCRIPTION:The documentary screening will be followed by a Q&A with Producer and Director Kiki Tianqi Yu via Skype\, moderated by Benny Shaffer\, PhD Candidate in Media Anthropology. \n About the film:\nChina’s Van Goghs (Mandarin with English subtitles\, 80 min\, HD) \nUntil 1989\, Dafen Village on the outskirts of Shenzhen\, China was little more than a rural hamlet. It now has a population of 10\,000\, which includes hundreds of peasants-turned-oil painters. In their studios\, and even in its alleyways\, Dafen’s painters produce thousands of replicas of world-famous Western paintings. No one thinks much of an order for 200 Van Goghs. To meet deadlines\, painters sleep on the floor between clotheslines strung with reproduced masterpieces. In 2015\, the revenue from painting sales was over $65 million. In China’s Van Goghs\, directors Haibo Yu and Kiki Tianqi Yu follow one of the village’s most celebrated painters\, Xiaoyong Zhao\, who with the help of his family members has painted around 100\,000 Van Goghs. After all these years\, Zhao feels a profound affinity with Van Gogh. Having never seen Van Gogh’s original paintings\, Zhao’s biggest dream is to travel to Amsterdam to see the works of his legendary inspiration. After struggling and saving up for many years\, he fulfills his dream. The documentary not only presents how this painter pursues his vision\, but also tells the human story of challenge and struggle throughout his journey\, which is ultimately emblematic of the transformative journey that China is undergoing from “Made in China” to “Created in China.” \nAfter its premier at International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2016\, China’s Van Goghs has been shown at Helsinki Documentary Film Festival DocPoint\, Thessaloniki Film Festival\,  Visions Du Reel\, New Zealand International Film Festival\, DMZ Docs South Korea\, British Film Institute London’s special program\, and over twenty other film festivals. It has won Best Feature Documentary (international co-production) at Beijing International Film Festival and Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival\, as well as Best Feature Documentary at Los Angeles Chinese Film Festival. \nAbout the Directors: \nProducer and Co-director:\nKiki Tianqi YU is a filmmaker\, scholar\, and film curator. Originally from China\, Kiki studied film and sociology at the University of Westminster and the University of Cambridge. Having lectured in China\, she is currently Lecturer in Filmmaking at the University of the West of Scotland. Yu has published on first person documentary\, Chinese cinema\, amateur cinema and memory in Studies in Documentary Film\, Journal of Chinese Cinemas\, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art\, and other publications. She is the author of the forthcoming monograph My ‘Self’ On Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualizing China (Edinburg University Press\, 2018)\, and the co-editor of China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the 21st Century (2014). Her films include Photographing Shenzhen (2007)\, Memory of Home (2009)\, and the feature-length documentary China’s Van Goghs (IDFA\, 2016)\, which won seven international awards and screened at over twenty film festivals. \nCo-director and Cinematographer:\nYU Haibo is a filmmaker and a well-known Chinese documentary photographer. He serves as the Director of the Shenzhen Professional Photographers Association and the Chief Photo Editor of Shenzhen Economic Daily. His most prominent photo series\, “China Dafen Oil Painting Village\,” won the 49th World Press Photography Contest in 2006\, and was acquired by the San Francisco Modern Art Museum\, and V&A Museum\, London. Yu is a pioneer in surrealist photography in China through his work “On the Other Riverside of the Illusion Chain\,” which won the top prize at the 15th National Photography Exhibition in 1988. Since 1989\, he has been working on documentary photography\, and his photo series including “Tibet\,” “Music Youth\,” “China’s Urban Expansion\,” have won many prizes and been exhibited internationally. Yu published a book Living in China’s Shenzhen (2008)\, and a photo-essay film One Man’s Shenzhen (2012). \nThis event is sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Emergent Visions is a screening and discussion series that showcases new and innovative works of digital cinema from China.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-chinas-van-goghs/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Emergent Visions Film Screening,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180501T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180501T200000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20180418T143933Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180418T143933Z
UID:7071-1525197600-1525204800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: An Elephant Sitting Still
DESCRIPTION:The final event of the spring semester for the Emergent Visions film series will be hosted at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square. The event is free and open to the public. \nSYNOPSIS: \nAn Elephant Sitting Still (大象席地而坐)\, 2018\, HD\, Mandarin with English subtitles\, 230 min. \nUnder the gloomy sky of a small town in northern China\, different protagonists’ lives are intertwined in this lugubrious tale of nihilistic rage. To protect his friend\, 16-year-old Wei Bu pushes the school bully down a staircase and escapes the scene after the bully becomes hospitalized with his life hanging by a thread. Wei’s neighbor\, the 60-year-old Wang Jin\, is estranged from his family and decides to join him. Huang Ling\, Wei’s classmate\, is bedeviled by an affair with a school official. Together\, the desperate three decide to flee as the wounded bully’s hooligan brother\, the school authorities\, and the parents all go on a cold-blooded hunt for Wei across town. As Wei treads through the wilderness\, he finally confronts his own reality. He later boards a long-distance bus with Huang and Wang toward Manchuria\, where a circus elephant is said to be sitting still. \nDIRECTOR’S STATEMENT \n“He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heartbeat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.” This quote from Cormac McCarthy is also the subject of this film. In our age\, it’s increasingly hard for us to have faith even in the tiniest of things\, and the frustration from which becomes the hallmark of today’s society. The film builds up personal myths in between daily routines. In the end\, everyone loses what he or she values the most. \nOfficial Selection of the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival\, and the New Directors/New Films 2018 presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA. \nDIRECTOR’S BIO: \nHU Bo (Writer and Director)\, born in 1988 in China\, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 2014 with a B.F.A. in directing. His short film Distant Father (2014) won Best Director at Golden Koala Chinese Film Festival\, and Night Runner (2014) was selected by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Academy. His debut feature An Elephant Sitting Still\, which was then still in progress\, was selected by the FIRST \nInternational Film Festival Financing Forum in 2016. In the following year\, Hu Bo participated in FIRST Training Camp under the supervision of Béla Tarr\, where he completed the short film Man in the Well. He has also written two novels Huge Crack and Bullfrog\, both published in 2017. Hu Bo took his own life soon after finishing An Elephant Sitting Still. \nThis event is sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Emergent Visions is a screening and discussion series that showcases new and innovative works of digital cinema from China. \n  \n 
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-an-elephant-sitting-still/
LOCATION:Brattle Theater\, 40 Brattle St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Emergent Visions Film Screening,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181110T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181110T230000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20181010T184422Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20181010T184422Z
UID:7679-1541858400-1541890800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Vigil and Memorial: Two Films by Wang Bing
DESCRIPTION:An in-person discussion with Wang Bing follows each film screening.\n$12 Special Event Tickets \nThis event is co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center’s Emergent Visions in Independent Chinese Cinema series\, organized by Professor Jie Li\, and the Harvard Film Archive. \n***NOTE TIME CHANGE***\nFriday November 9 at 8pm \nMrs. Fang\nA moving and bracing portrait of a dying woman and her family\, Mrs. Fang offers a remarkable variation of Wang Bing’s engaged cinema that demands the viewer to empathize and experience\, in real time and real emotion\, the intense yet poetically unfolding human dramas captured by his unwavering camera. Wang Bing’s shortest feature to date is among his most ethically and structurally profound—balanced between extended close-ups of the frail Fang Xiuying\, locked into an open-eyed coma\, and tender scenes of her family alternately overcome by grief and matter-of-factly accepting the inevitable. Most surprising are the sequences featuring two family members leaving Mrs. Fang’s small home to go night fishing\, an exercise that gently carries the weight of spiritual metaphor: a search for sustenance\, survival\, friendship in a cold\, dark world. \nSaturday November 10 at 2pm \nDead Souls\nAt eight hours and fifteen minutes\, Dead Souls is based on interviews\, footage and other memory traces Wang Bing gathered over twelve years\, from more than 120 people across various provinces. Covering a period from the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957 to the end of the Great Leap famine in 1961\, most of the film features testimonies from survivors of a “re-education camp” in northwestern China\, many once “revolutionaries” who were then “revolutionized.” Incarcerated for minor criticisms of the Party\, for past support of the Kuomintang\, for Christian faith\, or for no reason they can fathom\, former camp inmates recount recipes of starvation\, logistics of death and ruinations of families. Occasionally we also see their wives in the margins of the frame or hear offscreen voices of children too young to understand. The overlay of their testimonies—full of resonances\, contradictions\, digressions and silences—metonymically point to past injustice and suffering at a much larger scale.  While Wang Bing explored the same harrowing topic of the Jiabiangou labor camp in previous work such as Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (2007) and The Ditch (2010)\, the monumental scale\, unsensational precision and multiple perspectives of Dead Souls have drawn comparisons to Claude Lanzmann’s Holocaust documentary Shoah. Mediating testimony for those who can no longer bear witness for themselves\, Dead Souls invites us to partake in a belated memorial service for the victims of the Maoist revolution still condemned to state-sponsored amnesia.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/vigil-and-memorial-two-films-by-wang-bing-2018-11-10/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181126T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181126T210000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20181022T182908Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20181022T182908Z
UID:7698-1543258800-1543266000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: The Great Buddha
DESCRIPTION:Directed by Huang Hsin-yao. With Cres Chuang\, Bamboo Chen\, Leon Dai\nTaiwan 2017\, DCP\, color & b/w\, 102 min. Min Nan with English subtitles \nhttps://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa\nGeneral Admission Tickets $9\, $7 Non-Harvard Students\, Seniors\, Harvard Faculty and Staff. Harvard students free
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-the-great-buddha/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190302T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190302T210000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20190220T154753Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190220T154753Z
UID:7925-1551553200-1551560400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening - The Stormy Night by Zhu Shouju
DESCRIPTION:Discussant: Shi Chuan\, professor\, The Shanghai Theater Academy\, Vice President of the Shanghai Film Association\, and Chief Curator\, Shanghai Film Museum. \nMore than 650 films were reportedly made in China between 1921 and 1931\, yet no more than twenty have survived the wars that followed. The serendipitous rediscovery of Zhu Shouju’s 1925 film The Stormy Night gives us a rare opportunity to learn about this significant yet forgotten era of Chinese silent cinema. \nhttps://library.harvard.edu/film/films/2019marmay/stormy.html \n 
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-the-stormy-night-by-zhu-shouju/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures,Emergent Visions Film Screening,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190509T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190509T183000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20190419T151822Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T151822Z
UID:8093-1557417600-1557426600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening and Discussion with Director Hu Jie - The Spark
DESCRIPTION:Director Hu Jie will be in person for a Q&A (Mandarin with English translation) following the screening.  \nFollowing the Anti-Rightist movement of 1957\, a group of Lanzhou University students who had been condemned as Rightists were sent to rural areas in Tianshui\, Gansu Province\, to be reformed through labor. There they witnessed the violent absurdities of the Great Leap Forward and the mass starvation and deaths of the Great Famine. In response\, they started an underground publication\, which they called The Spark\, in which they exposed exaggerated local harvest reports along with rural poverty and starvation. They also initiated a profound theoretical analysis and criticism of the structure of the People’s Commune\, placing blame for the Great Leap Forward on the Communi The publication also carried Lin Zhao’s long poem “Prometheus’s Day of Passion.” The Spark is the only extant unofficial\, intellectual periodical from the time of the Great Famine. In the end\, 43 people\, including the Rightist teachers and students who were connected with its publication\, as well as the peasants and rural cadres who sympathized with them\, were arrested and given long prison sentences. Among them\, three key figures—Zhang Chunyuan\, county party secretary Du Yinghua\, and Lin Zhao—were executed during the Cultural Revolution.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-and-discussion-with-director-hu-jie-the-spark/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Emergent Visions Film Screening,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191105T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191105T190000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20190913T150909Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190913T150909Z
UID:8607-1572969600-1572980400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening and Panel Discussion - "One Child Nation"
DESCRIPTION:Panel Discussion:\nJialing Zhang\, Co-Director of “One Child Nation”\nMable Chan\, Founder of China Personified; One in a Billion Productions\nSusan Greenhalgh\, John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society\, Harvard University\nJie Li\, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities\, Harvard University\nKaren Thornber\, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations\, Harvard University \nCo-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-and-panel-discussion-one-child-nation/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Emergent Visions Film Screening,Events of Interest,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191107T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191107T210000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20191010T121342Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191010T121342Z
UID:8695-1573153200-1573160400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening - Fukuoka
DESCRIPTION:Directed by: Zhang Lu\nQ&A with Director following the screening\, moderated by Peng Hai\, PhD Candidate\, East Asian Languages and Civilizations \nHae-hyo and Jea-moon were very good friends in college\, eventually going their separate ways after falling in love with the same girl. They have not seen or heard from each other ever since. As time passes and Jea-moon approaches middle age\, the memory of his college life becomes ever more refreshed\, and begins to haunt him more and more. At this moment\, a strange girl\, So-dam\, not only intrudes into his quiet second-hand bookstore\, but also disturbs his life\, urging him to set out on a long journey to Japan to look for Hae-hyo. In Japan\, when the three of them finally meet in a local pub\, can the problems of their past be reconciled? \nAbout the Director:\nZhang Lu is a third-generation ethnically Korean filmmaker born in Yanbian\, Jilin Province\, China in 1962. He began his career with short film Eleven (2000)\, which was invited to Venice International Film Festival. His debut feature film Tang Poetry (2003) premiered at Locarno International Film Festival. His second feature Grain in Ear (2005) won the ACID award at Cannes Critics’ Week and the New Currents Award at Busan International Film Festival. Desert Dream (2007) and Dooman River (2011) were selected for the Berlin International Film Festival. Gyeongju (2014) was in the competition at Locarno Film Festival. He served on the jury at Busan International Film Festival in 2016\, and his feature A Quiet Dream (2006) was screened as the opening film of the festival that year. \nThis event is co-sponsored by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF) and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Special thanks to Parallax Films.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-fukuoka/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Emergent Visions Film Screening,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191108T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191108T200000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20191010T121536Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191010T121536Z
UID:8696-1573236000-1573243200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening - Jinpa
DESCRIPTION:Directed by: Pema Tseden\nQ&A with Director following the screening\, moderated by Benny Shaffer\, PhD Candidate\, Anthropology \nOn an isolated road passing through the vast barren plains of Tibet\, a truck driver who has accidentally run over a sheep chances upon a young man who is hitching a ride. As they drive and chat\, the truck driver notices that his new friend has a silver dagger strapped to his leg. He comes to understand that this man is out to kill someone who wronged him earlier in life. As he drops the hitchhiker off at a fork in the road\, little does the truck driver realize that their short time together has changed everything\, and that their destinies are inexorably intertwined. On the path of life\, sometimes we meet someone whose dreams overtake our own to the point that they converge. \nOfficial Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdK-yNrnQBk \nAbout the Director:\nWriter and director Pema Tseden was born in 1969 in Amdo\, a Tibetan region of Qinghai Province. He is widely recognized as the leading filmmaker of a newly emerging Tibetan cinema and the first director in China to make films entirely in the Tibetan language. Tseden has published more than 50 short stories and novels both in Tibetan and Mandarin; his work has won numerous awards including the Drang-char Tibetan Literature Prize and has been translated into English\, French\, and German. He began his film career in 2002. His feature films\, all of which have received great acclaim\, include The Grassland (2004)\, The Silent Holy Stones (2005)\, The Search (2009)\, Old Dog (2011)\, Tharlo (2015) and Jinpa (2019). Tseden is Chairman of the Directors Association of China\, and  also a member of the Filmmakers and Literary Societies of China. \nThis event is co-sponsored by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF) and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Special thanks to Livia Bloom of Icarus Films.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-jinpa/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Emergent Visions Film Screening,Film Screening
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220121T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220131T075959
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20220118T211817Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220118T211817Z
UID:11311-1642752000-1643615999@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Harvard Film Archive Film Screening - Tabooed Initiation: Two Early Films by Mou Tun-Fei
DESCRIPTION:I Didn’t Dare Tell You / Bugan gen ni jiang\, 78 minutes\, Taiwan\, 1969. Mandarin with English subtitles.\nThe End of the Track / Pao Dao Zhongdian\, 90 minutes\, Taiwan\, 1970. Mandarin with English subtitles. \nRecently discovered by the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute\, I Didn’t Dare Tell You and The End of the Track debuted at the 2018 Taiwan International Documentary Festival and have since toured the world. Encompassing a wide affective spectrum—from repressed yearning to mournful regrets\, from abusive love to homoerotic desire—they represent the tabooed initiation of a visionary director whose versatile career has yet to be fully appreciated. \nThis virtual series was curated and coordinated by Harvard University’s East Asian Film & Media Working Group. \nFor more information on each film\, as well as virtual screening information\, visit https://watchhfa.eventive.org/welcome.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/harvard-film-archive-film-screening-tabooed-initiation-two-early-films-by-mou-tun-fei/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220930T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221021T190000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20220922T172804Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220929T202842Z
UID:29577-1664564400-1666378800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screenings - The Face of Time: Recent Films by Tsai Ming-Liang
DESCRIPTION:Rare and valuable is the filmmaker who expands one’s conception of the cinematic art; rarer still is the filmmaker who enlarges one’s notion of the term “director.” Malaysian-born\, Taiwan-based auteur Tsai Ming-liang (b. 1957) accomplished the former with his rigorous\, uncompromising and reputation-defining features of the nineties and early 2000s\, and ever since his self-declared retirement from narrative filmmaking after 2013’s Stray Dogs\, he has been anything but inactive while exploring the endless permutations of what it means to be an image maker in the 21st century. Among the many formally adventurous international filmmakers who have struck out for greener pastures in the past decade upon finding the commercial prospects of arthouse cinema distribution increasingly deficient\, Tsai has dabbled in the gallery space\, the black box theater\, virtual reality and the independently run exhibition space as venues to both showcase his uncategorizable work and influence how he produces it. Along the way\, he has transformed his very approach to capturing filmic material\, and where once a pithy precis for his films existed—Antonioni-esque studies of alienated Taiwanese youth\, for instance—there is no longer such a firm summary for exactly what a Tsai Ming-liang project looks like or how it operates.Tsai Ming-Liang and his collaborators will appear in person at film screenings on October 10 and 14.For more information on this series\, including a complete listing of showtimes and information on purchasing tickets\, visit https://harvardfilmarchive.org/programs/the-face-of-time-recent-films-by-tsai-ming-liang.  \n\n\n\nThis event is co-sponsored by the Harvard Film Archive and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screenings-the-face-of-time-recent-films-by-tsai-ming-liang/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Tsai_Poster.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230403T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230403T210000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20230330T155256Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230330T155258Z
UID:31987-1680546600-1680555600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: "The Schools Out of City\," Featuring Discussion with Executive Director (PEER)\, Hong Liu and Co-producer\, Xinran Liang 
DESCRIPTION:Speakers:Hong Liu\, Executive Director of PEER\, an NGO dedicated to promoting educational equity in rural China Xinran Liang\, Co-producer of the documentary  Menghan Shen\, Associate Professor of Government\, Sun Yat-Sen University; Research Fellow\, HKS  \n\n\n\nRural China. Mysterious\, distant\, silent. What does it mean to address rural-urban educational inequality in China as an individual and a volunteer? What does it mean to promote ‘quality education’ in rural county high schools\, inside out? What does it mean to be ‘on the ground’? The Schools Out of City (沉默的县中) follows the footsteps of long-term volunteers in three high schools in rural Hunan and Guangxi and invites its audience to a world of bottom-up educational experiments. Following the screening\, there will be a discussion with Hong Liu\, executive director of the rural education NGO\, PEER\, Xinran Liang\, co-producer of the documentary\, and Menghan Shen\, Associate Professor of Government at Sun Yat-Sen University and research fellow at HKS.  \n\n\n\nPEER is an NGO founded in 2007 by a group of Harvard alumni to promote educational equity in rural China. It has over a decade of experience of working with students and teachers from rural county schools.  Please contact xiaorui_zhou@g.harvard.edu for more information.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-the-schools-out-of-city-featuring-discussion-with-executive-director-peer-hong-liu-and-co-producer-xinran-liang/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S050\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/PEER_Documentary_Poster-scaled.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240319T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240319T201500
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240229T140346Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T181648Z
UID:35784-1710871200-1710879300@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Big Waves\, Great Earthquakes Screening No. 1 - China's First Environmental Film - Big Tree County\, featuring an introduction by Iza Ding
DESCRIPTION:Introduction: Iza Ding\, Associate Professor of Political Science\, Northwestern UniversityModerator: Sam Maclean\, Communications Manager\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies \n\n\n\nThe screening will be followed by a Zoom Q&A with filmmaker Hao Zhiqiang. \n\n\n\nThe Fairbank Center’s Big Waves\, Great Earthquakes screening series presents its first film\, China’s First Environmental Film – Big Tree County (1992). \n\n\n\nBig Waves\, Great Earthquakes explores the largely unseen early history of independent film in China\, beginning in the late 1980s. Wu Wenguang— who’s usually credited as China’s first independent filmmaker— has likened the emotions of this era to a “big wave”; Wu’s contemporary\, Wen Pulin\, was working independently even earlier\, documenting the avant-garde arts scene in Beijing with his legendary\, but never-completed\, film The Great Earthquake. This screening series will unearth films long-suppressed by Chinese authorities in order to rewrite the narrative of modern film history in China. \n\n\n\nFilmmaker Hao Zhiqiang has said that he wants to capture “the soul of the Chinese people” with his work. His first two films do this by showing how larger forces (the wind-like momentum of history and a town that cut down the giant tree it was named after) can render society helpless to change. Wind (1988) is the first independently produced animated film ever made in China; it  meditates on the legacy of the Cultural Revolution\, and how it shaped the social and political attitudes of many artists and intellectuals in the late 1980s. Big Tree County (1992) may well be China’s first environmental film: While working at CCTV in the early ‘90s\, Hao was inspired by a newspaper article describing a sulfur-iron mining town to haul his station’s equipment hundreds of miles to the border of Sichuan\, Yunnan\, and Guizhou provinces and film a village whose “Big Tree” had been chopped down decades earlier to build the pollution-spewing\, labor-exploiting sulfur-iron mine that came to define the town. This modest but rigorous example of “direct cinema” documentary registers a forceful sociopolitical activism and an uncommon concern for environmental issues. \n\n\n\nIza Ding is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. Her research explores modernity and its discontents\, especially in areas related to the environment\, climate change\, bureaucracy\, populism\, nationalism\, morality\, political memory\, and ideology. Her recent publications include The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China (Cornell University Press 2022)\, and articles in World Politics\, Comparative Political Studies\, Democratization\, Studies in Comparative International Development\, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management\, and China Quarterly. She is working on a book-length monograph on the global historical waves of environmentalism. She received her Ph.D in Government from Harvard University and her BA in Political Science and Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Michigan. \n\n\n\nWind directed by Hao Zhiqiang. China\, 1988\, animated\, 7 min.Big Tree County directed by Hao Zhiqiang. China\, 1992\, documentary\, 42 min. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-big-tree-county-featuring-an-introduction-by-iza-ding/
LOCATION:CGIS South S020\, Belfer Case Study Room\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/wind.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240329T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240329T220000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T163132Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T163134Z
UID:35493-1711738800-1711749600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: Yi Yi (A One and a Two …)\, with introduction by Kalli Peng
DESCRIPTION:Edward Yang’s cinematic swan song\, released at the turn of the millennium\, is a moving tapestry that weaves together the dissolution and reconstitution of the fragile subjectivities in an increasingly global\, capitalist and mediated urban society. Yi Yi opens with a wedding and ends with a funeral. What unfolds between love and death is everything that saturates our modern existence: awakening\, nostalgia\, contingency\, anxiety\, alienation\, the ennui of everyday banality and the oscillations between longings for interpersonal dependence and fears of intimacy. This three-hour-long audiovisual epic unfolds the confusions and struggles of the multigenerational Jian family. As the grandmother falls into a coma\, the family members take turns sitting at her bedside relaying their life to her\, only to hear their own doubts and uncertainties reverberate in the resounding silence. At his tenderest moment\, Yang\, through Yi Yi\, delicately\, wisely and elegantly portrays the poignant reminiscences of the stirrings of first love and unveils the beauty that all too often shies away in the face of a perceived emptiness of life. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Wu Nien-Jen\, Elaine Jin\, Issey Ogata \n\n\n\nTaiwan/Japan 2000\, 35mm\, color\, 173 min. Mandarin\, Min Nan\, Hokkien\, English\, Japanese and French with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-yi-yi-a-one-and-a-two-with-introduction-by-kalli-peng/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/12.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240330T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240330T220000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T163724Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T163726Z
UID:35498-1711821600-1711836000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: A Brighter Summer Day (Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian)\, with introduction by Kalli Peng
DESCRIPTION:Similar to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s A City of Sadness (1989)\, A Brighter Summer Day also traces the experiences of a large family during a critical historical epoch in Taiwan. Set in the early 1960s\, against the backdrop of a society witnessing the consequences of major demographic shifts and political oppression\, this film depicts the difficult trials awaiting the simple and harmonious life of the Zhang family. With Yang’s exacting demands on the historical accuracy of the props\, such as the family house and the furniture in the classrooms\, A Brighter Summer Day splendidly restores the material historical world to us while inquiring into its zeitgeist. Caught between the world of rock ‘n’ roll\, gang rivalry\, love triangles and the White Terror paranoia\, a group of teenagers are compelled to learn to negotiate the tensions and discrepancy between ideals and reality. The adolescent struggles in grasping that which is worth holding on to\, be it people or principle\, turn out to be an inescapable fate for adults alike. \n\n\n\nWidely considered as Yang’s magnum opus\, this film\, based on a real-life murder\, launched Chang Chen’s acting career at the age of fourteen. The brilliant juxtapositions of light and darkness\, movement and stasis\, sound and silence\, all work together to yield a tragic lonesomeness that even the warmth of a bright summer day cannot cure. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Chang Chen\, Lisa Yang\, Chang Kuo-Chu \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1991\, DCP\, color\, 237 min. Mandarin\, Min Nan\, Shanghainese and English with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-a-brighter-summer-day-guling-jie-shaonian-sharen-shijian-with-introduction-by-kalli-peng/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/BD.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240331T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240331T220000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T164131Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T164132Z
UID:35503-1711911600-1711922400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: A Confucian Confusion (Du li shi dai)
DESCRIPTION:A satirical comedy with biting wit and a romance that is equally suspicious of and hopeful about love\, this film ambitiously negotiates the coexistence of Confucianism with capitalism and democracy. In what feels like a second take of his Taipei Story\, Yang stages a frantic tango that is danced not with two but twelve. A circle of closely knit friends and relatives forms an entangled web of relationships where lost and insecure young professionals (civil servants\, accountants\, businessmen\, publishers\, writers\, and artists) navigate different emotional scenes in a vibrant Taipei. Following a series of misunderstandings\, a pervasive sense of loneliness permeates these densely populated frames\, resulting in a deliberate messiness. Intentionally not a guide for the perplexed\, Yang’s dazzling world melts pretense\, fakeness\, authenticity and sincerity into a confounding pool of restlessness. \n\n\n\nOne of the two least heralded (or screened) films by Edward Yang (the other being Mahjong)\, A Confucian Confusion’sstylistic and narrative experimentation is in fact fiercer than ever\, reflecting his ongoing formal exploration in a diverse oeuvre. Made after directing plays such as Likely Consequence (1992) and Growth Period (1993)\, A Confucian Confusionconducts\, with a bold theatricality\, a brilliant investigation into the challenging sedimentations of traditional ideals of social conformity and hierarchy in a modern age of independence. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Chen Li-Mei\, Chen Shiang-chyi\, Chen Yi-Wen \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1994\, DCP\, color\, 125 min. Mandarin and Min Nan with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-a-confucian-confusion-du-li-shi-dai/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/acc.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240407T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240407T180000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T164451Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T164452Z
UID:35506-1712502000-1712512800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: Mahjong (Ma jiang)
DESCRIPTION:Mahjong is a game for four players\, and the one who first collects winning sets of tiles wins. But the real game lies not in these rectangular pieces per se\, but in deliberating what one already has and could afford to discard or how to acquire from others what one desires but does not yet possess. The funniest and angriest of Yang’s films\, Mahjong questions the sustainability of the dominance of a calculating profit-mindedness and transactional mentality\, incubated in a capitalist madness blown to the point of barbarity. Red Fish\, the son of a missing millionaire\, leads a group of four young men as they swim in the ocean of ambivalent values among European expats\, entrepreneurs\, liars and criminals. A series of surprising events expose a social world where tenderness only makes one vulnerable to be exploited or deceived\, and people—avoiding responsibilities—lack courage to think or make decisions for themselves. Following A Confucian Confusion\, this dark comedy continues to experiment with theatrical forms. Yang’s use of lighting in a scene of an astonishing and dramatically powerful murder recalls Béla Tarr’s intense chamber drama Autumn Almanac (1984). The repeated appearance of T.G.I. Friday’s and the Hard Rock Café\, along with other globalist trinkets\, casts an alluring\, mysterious and uncanny shadow over Taipei’s colorful nightlife. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Tang Tsung Sheng\, Chang Chen\, Lawrence Ko \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1996\, DCP\, color\, 121 min. Mandarin\, Min Nan and English with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-mahjong-ma-jiang/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/mj.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240408T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240408T210000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T165027Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T165253Z
UID:35511-1712602800-1712610000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: The Terrorizers (Kong bu fen zi)
DESCRIPTION:Characterized as “Yang’s most difficult\, intellectually provocative\, and structurally challenging film” (John Anderson)\, Edward Yang’s third feature-length film is a puzzle with immense reverberatory power. The Terrorizers depicts the intertwining of love and death among three different couples: a young photographer and his literary girlfriend; a middle-class and middle-aged married couple whose mutual estrangement grows to the point of no return; and a delinquent duo whose income comes from committing petty pickpocketing and blackmailing. Prank phone calls\, amateur photography\, writer’s block and coveted promotions serendipitously bring these separate lives together. As close relationships come to a dissolution\, the distinctions between life and art\, fiction and reality also edge toward implosion. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Cora Miao\, Lee Li-Chun\, King Shih-Chieh \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1986\, DCP\, color\, 110 min. Mandarin and Min Nan with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-the-terrorizers-kong-bu-fen-zi/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/terro.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240415T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240415T220000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T165551Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T165554Z
UID:35516-1713207600-1713218400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: That Day\, on the Beach (Hai tan de yi tian)
DESCRIPTION:A renowned young pianist\, Tan Ching-Ching (Terry Hu) comes back to Taipei for the first time in thirteen years to give a performance. An old friend\, Lin Jia-li (Sylvia Chang)\, gets in touch with her to reconvene over an afternoon coffee. That Day\, on the Beach takes place over a conversation between the two female friends\, during which Ching learns about how the romantic and domestic life of Jia-li and her elder brother evolved over the past decade. Through complex flashbacks\, the microcosmic personal life is revealed to be closely interwoven with the drastic economic and social changes that Taiwan witnessed over the entire 70s. Full of subtle narrative and cinematic surprises\, the film explores the difficulties that accompany freedom\, love and trust; in staging the fragility of any sense of facile contentment and hope\, it makes visible the pleasure and pain entailed in one’s pursuits of happiness. The film also marks the debut of Christopher Doyle as a cinematographer\, best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-Wai. Released in Taiwan four decades ago\, Edward Yang’s first feature’s length\, storytelling\, and formal ingenuity all speak to his unwavering will to uphold his artistic vision despite all obstacles. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Sylvia Chang\, Hsu Ming\, Lee Lieh \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1983\, DCP\, color\, 166 min. Mandarin and German with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-that-day-on-the-beach-hai-tan-de-yi-tian/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/bch.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240419T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240419T203000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240327T151839Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T181703Z
UID:35963-1713549600-1713558600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Big Waves\, Great Earthquakes Screening No. 2 – Skirting Censorship in Tibet: No. 16. Barkhor South Street\, featuring an introduction by Janet Gyatso and remarks from Lobsang Sangay
DESCRIPTION:Introduction: Janet Gyatso\, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies\, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs\, Harvard Divinity SchoolProgrammer: Sam Maclean\, Communications Manager\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies \n\n\n\nUpdate: Post-screening discussion with Lobsang Sangay\, former Sikyong (President) of the Central Tibetan Administration\, Senior Visiting Fellow\, East Asian Legal Studies\, Harvard Law School. \n\n\n\nBig Waves\, Great Earthquakes explores the largely unseen early history of independent film in China\, beginning in the late 1980s. Wu Wenguang — who’s usually credited as China’s first independent filmmaker — has likened the emotions of this era to a “big wave”; Wu’s contemporary\, Wen Pulin\, was working independently even earlier\, documenting the avant-garde arts scene in Beijing with his legendary\, but never-completed\, film The Great Earthquake. This screening series will unearth films long-suppressed by Chinese authorities in order to rewrite the narrative of modern film history in China. \n\n\n\nThe first of three documentaries that Duan Jinchuan shot in Tibet in 1995\, No 16. Barkhor South Street takes obvious cues from American documentary giant Frederick Wiseman in both its focus on the innerworkings of an institution (the Barkhor Neighborhood Committee\, a Communist Party-directed office in Lhasa that conducts community mediation and encourages Party registration) and in its “direct cinema” style. The film offers us a rare glimpse inside a government office of the People’s Republic. Police recruits native to Lhasa are seen in classrooms learning modern Chinese history\, a sequence with parallels to the ‘re-education’ of Uyghurs in Xinjiang today. Various meetings are held to stress\, with unconvincing congeniality\, the paramount importance of active opposition to separatism—especially as the Committee (and Lhasa at large) prepares to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Duan demonstrates a complete understanding of the complex social dynamics in front of his camera\, whether it’s the demand for assimilation from the residents\, as measured against the rigorous approval-requirements for anyone to join the Party\, or the overwhelmed feelings of officials as they struggle to apply modern legal rationale to familial conflicts clearly rooted in immovable\, indigenous Buddhist traditions. \n\n\n\nProfessor Janet Gyatso (珍妮·嘉措) is a specialist in Buddhist studies with concentration on Tibetan and South Asian cultural and intellectual history. Her books include Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary; In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism; and Women of Tibet. She has recently completed a new book\, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press\, 2015)\, which focuses upon alternative early modernities and the conjunctions and disjunctures between religious and scientific epistemologies in Tibetan medicine in the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries. She has also been writing on sex and gender in Buddhist monasticism\, and on the current female ordination movement in Buddhism. Previous topics of her scholarship have included visionary revelation in Buddhism; lineage\, memory\, and authorship; the philosophy of experience; and autobiographical writing in Tibet.  \n\n\n\nNo. 16 Barkhor South Street directed by Duan Jinchuan. China\, 1996\, documentary\, 96 min. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/big-waves-great-earthquakes-screening-no-2-skirting-censorship-in-tibet-no-16-barkhor-south-street-featuring-an-introduction-by-janet-gyatso/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/wavs2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240422T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240422T200000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240410T180858Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240419T183014Z
UID:36141-1713803400-1713816000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Tiananmen @ 35 Film Screening: The Gate of Heavenly Peace
DESCRIPTION:Introduction: Carma Hinton\, Art historian and Documentary Filmmaker; Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies\, George Mason University (retired) \n\n\n\n“In The Gate of Heavenly Peace (the literal translation of the name Tiananmen)\, the causes\, effects and fallout from the six-week protest that led up to the Chinese government’s crackdown on dissidents are detailed with intelligence\, grace and toughness. Filmmakers Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon have transformed news into history\, and history into art.” — Michael Blowen\, The Boston Globe   \n\n\n\nThe Gate of Heavenly Peace chronicles the heroism\, drama\, tension\, humor\, absurdity\, and many tragedies of the peaceful popular protests during the spring weeks of 1989\, culminating on June 4th\, when the government’s bloody crackdown dashed the hopes of millions. Using archival footage and contemporary interviews with a wide range of Chinese citizens\, including students\, workers\, intellectuals\, and government officials\, the film reveals how the hard-liners within the government marginalized moderates among the protesters\, resulting in the voices for reason gradually being cowed and then silenced by extremism and emotionalism on both sides. \n\n\n\nIt is a sobering tale\, for faced with the binary opposition between hardened stances\, there has been little middle ground left for the rational and thoughtful proponents of positive reform in China. By giving these ignored voices their proper place in history\, The Gate of Heavenly Peace reveals an ongoing debate in 20th century China regarding revolution and reform\, as well as the importance of personal responsibility and moral integrity\, the need\, as Vaclav Havel has put it\, to “live in the truth.” \n\n\n\nCarma Hinton is an art historian and a filmmaker. She was born in Beijing\, and Chinese is her first language and culture. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University and taught at various universities between major film projects. Together with Richard Gordon\, Hinton has directed many documentary films on China\, including Small Happiness\, All Under Heaven\, To Taste a Hundred Herbs\, Abode of Illusion: The Life and Art of Chang Dai-chien\, The Gate of Heavenly Peace\, and Morning Sun. She has won two Peabody Awards\, the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award\, the International Critics Prize and the Best Social and Political Documentary at the Banff Television Festival\, among others. She retired from her position as Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University recently to focus on her book about traditional Chinese scrolls depicting the theme of demon quelling and work on the extensive archive of film and other visual materials she and Richard Gordon collected over decades of research and film production.  \n\n\n\nThe Gate of Heavenly Peace produced and directed by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon. United States\, 1995\, documentary\, 187 min. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/tiananmen-35-film-screening-the-gate-of-heavenly-peace/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening,Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/gate-of-heavenly-peace.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240422T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240422T210000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T165900Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T170130Z
UID:35522-1713812400-1713819600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: In Our Time (Guang yin de gu shi)
DESCRIPTION:The omnibus film In Our Time initiated radical innovations in terms of aesthetic styles\, industry practices and commonly depicted themes\, thereby revolutionizing the filmmaking industry in Taiwan and inaugurating the movement of Taiwan New Cinema. The four segments are shot by four young emerging directors and each film—set in different decades from the 1950s to the 1980s—represents roughly one of the four younger stages of life: childhood\, adolescence\, young adulthood (in college) and married life (as working professionals). \n\n\n\nTitled Expectations\, sometimes translated as Desires\, Edward Yang’s segment features a series of sensitive and expressive vignettes that depict the growing pains of adolescents in mid-60s Taiwan. Yang sees the placement of the second short film as structurally akin to the second movement in a symphony\, typically characterized by its lyrical and slow nature. The teenaged Hsiao-Fen (Shi An-Ni) serves as a kind of prototype for other young heroines in Yang’s cinematic corpus. The diversity of the cinematic techniques used in his debut short film accentuates the complexity of the protagonist’s emotional and perceptual experience. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang\, Chang Yi\, Ko I-Chen and Tao Te-Chen. With Sylvia Chang\, Emily Y. Chang\, Lee Li-Chun \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1982\, DCP\, color\, 110 min. Mandarin and Min Nan with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-taipei-story-qing-mei-zhu-ma-2/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/iot.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240503T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240503T220000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T163312Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T163314Z
UID:35496-1714762800-1714773600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: Yi Yi (A One and a Two …)
DESCRIPTION:Edward Yang’s cinematic swan song\, released at the turn of the millennium\, is a moving tapestry that weaves together the dissolution and reconstitution of the fragile subjectivities in an increasingly global\, capitalist and mediated urban society. Yi Yi opens with a wedding and ends with a funeral. What unfolds between love and death is everything that saturates our modern existence: awakening\, nostalgia\, contingency\, anxiety\, alienation\, the ennui of everyday banality and the oscillations between longings for interpersonal dependence and fears of intimacy. This three-hour-long audiovisual epic unfolds the confusions and struggles of the multigenerational Jian family. As the grandmother falls into a coma\, the family members take turns sitting at her bedside relaying their life to her\, only to hear their own doubts and uncertainties reverberate in the resounding silence. At his tenderest moment\, Yang\, through Yi Yi\, delicately\, wisely and elegantly portrays the poignant reminiscences of the stirrings of first love and unveils the beauty that all too often shies away in the face of a perceived emptiness of life. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Wu Nien-Jen\, Elaine Jin\, Issey Ogata \n\n\n\nTaiwan/Japan 2000\, 35mm\, color\, 173 min. Mandarin\, Min Nan\, Hokkien\, English\, Japanese and French with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-yi-yi-a-one-and-a-two/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/12.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240504T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240504T220000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T163819Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T163820Z
UID:35501-1714845600-1714860000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: A Brighter Summer Day (Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian)
DESCRIPTION:Similar to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s A City of Sadness (1989)\, A Brighter Summer Day also traces the experiences of a large family during a critical historical epoch in Taiwan. Set in the early 1960s\, against the backdrop of a society witnessing the consequences of major demographic shifts and political oppression\, this film depicts the difficult trials awaiting the simple and harmonious life of the Zhang family. With Yang’s exacting demands on the historical accuracy of the props\, such as the family house and the furniture in the classrooms\, A Brighter Summer Day splendidly restores the material historical world to us while inquiring into its zeitgeist. Caught between the world of rock ‘n’ roll\, gang rivalry\, love triangles and the White Terror paranoia\, a group of teenagers are compelled to learn to negotiate the tensions and discrepancy between ideals and reality. The adolescent struggles in grasping that which is worth holding on to\, be it people or principle\, turn out to be an inescapable fate for adults alike. \n\n\n\nWidely considered as Yang’s magnum opus\, this film\, based on a real-life murder\, launched Chang Chen’s acting career at the age of fourteen. The brilliant juxtapositions of light and darkness\, movement and stasis\, sound and silence\, all work together to yield a tragic lonesomeness that even the warmth of a bright summer day cannot cure. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang. With Chang Chen\, Lisa Yang\, Chang Kuo-Chu \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1991\, DCP\, color\, 237 min. Mandarin\, Min Nan\, Shanghainese and English with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-a-brighter-summer-day-guling-jie-shaonian-sharen-shijian/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/BD.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240505T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240505T170000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240216T170202Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240216T170233Z
UID:35527-1714921200-1714928400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: In Our Time (Guang yin de gu shi)
DESCRIPTION:The omnibus film In Our Time initiated radical innovations in terms of aesthetic styles\, industry practices and commonly depicted themes\, thereby revolutionizing the filmmaking industry in Taiwan and inaugurating the movement of Taiwan New Cinema. The four segments are shot by four young emerging directors and each film—set in different decades from the 1950s to the 1980s—represents roughly one of the four younger stages of life: childhood\, adolescence\, young adulthood (in college) and married life (as working professionals). \n\n\n\nTitled Expectations\, sometimes translated as Desires\, Edward Yang’s segment features a series of sensitive and expressive vignettes that depict the growing pains of adolescents in mid-60s Taiwan. Yang sees the placement of the second short film as structurally akin to the second movement in a symphony\, typically characterized by its lyrical and slow nature. The teenaged Hsiao-Fen (Shi An-Ni) serves as a kind of prototype for other young heroines in Yang’s cinematic corpus. The diversity of the cinematic techniques used in his debut short film accentuates the complexity of the protagonist’s emotional and perceptual experience. \n\n\n\nDirected by Edward Yang\, Chang Yi\, Ko I-Chen and Tao Te-Chen. With Sylvia Chang\, Emily Y. Chang\, Lee Li-Chun \n\n\n\nTaiwan 1982\, DCP\, color\, 110 min. Mandarin and Min Nan with English subtitles \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-in-our-time-guang-yin-de-gu-shi/
LOCATION:Harvard Film Archive\, Carpenter Center\, 24 Quincy St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/iot.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241101T113000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241101T143000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20240930T152342Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T181519Z
UID:37606-1730460600-1730471400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:PRC @ 75 – Film Screening – The Dreamers Revisited: Bumming in Beijing (Original Extended Version)\, featuring an introduction by Eugene Yuejin Wang & Q+A with Wu Wenguang and Dingru Huang
DESCRIPTION:Introduction: Eugene Yuejin Wang\, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art; Founding Director of Harvard FAS CAMLab\, Harvard University.
Q+A Discussion: Dingru Huang\, Rumsey Family Junior Professor in the Humanities and the Arts\, Department of International Literary and Cultural Studies\, Tufts University; former Fairbank Center associateProgrammer: Sam Maclean\, Communications Manager\, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesFollowed by a Zoom Q+A with filmmaker Wu Wenguang\, director of Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers \n\n\n\n“I hope I can find a secure place to settle\, giving me enough time to create my art freely. That’s not too much to ask\, is it?” — painter Zhang Dali \n\n\n\nOften referred to as the first independent Chinese documentary ever made\, Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990) follows five young\, migrant artists—photographer Gao Bo\, playwright Mou Sen\, writer Zhang Ci\, and painters Zhang Dali and Zhang Xiaping—as they navigate the complexities of sociopolitical life in their adopted home of Beijing in the late 1980s.  \n\n\n\nThe subjects of the film (most of whom are now internationally recognized\, exhibited\, and award-winning artists in their respective fields) here refer to themselves\, alternately\, as “vagrants\,” “migrants\,” and “freelancers.” Some attended university in Beijing in the early 1980s\, while others migrated from rural parts of Heilongjiang\, Liaoning\, and Sichuan to look for work. The film’s director\, Wu Wenguang\, himself migrated to Beijing from Yunnan in 1988\, originally to take a position at CCTV. But after 1989\, Wu’s situation began to mirror that of his subjects—a struggling\, independent artist searching for free modes of expression. \n\n\n\nBumming in Beijing began its production life in 1988\, as an episode of a CCTV documentary series which would eventually be shelved for being too sensitive for its depiction of restless\, counterculture youths. In the fall of 1989\, Wu discreetly revived the project\, independently\, relying on the close relationships that he had developed with his subjects to draw out their feelings on a range of hot-button contemporary issues—residence permits\, economic inequality\, the commodification of art\, the position of women in the society\, and the temptation to go abroad—and using his remnant CCTV resources to complete an initial\, 134-minute version of the film. \n\n\n\nSubsequently\, a much shorter\, 68-minute version of Bumming in Beijing was created for international audiences\, screened at various film festivals\, and developed a reputation as one of the foundational works of China’s “New Documentary” film movement.  \n\n\n\nFor this screening\, we present the original\, extended cut of the film (which was only recently subtitled in English). This version offers a more immersive experience of what it was like occupying spaces on the margins of society at one of the most fraught and volatile moments in recent Chinese history. The filmmaking also strikes a balance between talking head-style documentary and long\, dialogue-less passages observing the subjects’ domestic life and artistic practice. It’s a more raw vision—Wu can be heard off-screen instructing his cinematographer how and when to move the camera; you can identify moments\, especially in earlier shot scenes\, when Wu is still working out how to approach his subjects—but all this strengthens the connective tissue between the mode of the film’s production and the social discourses it’s documenting\, resulting in a moving portrait of free and creatively resourceful art in the face of oppression. \n\n\n\nEugene Yuejin Wang is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University\, where he holds appointments in History of Art and Architecture\, Archeology\, Theater\, Dance\, and Media (TDM)\, Study of Religion\, and Inner Asia and Altaic Studies. A Guggenheim Fellow\, he is the author of the award-winning Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China. He is also the art history editor of Encyclopedia of Buddhism. His research ranges from early art and archaeology to modern art\, media\, and cinema. He is also the founding director of Harvard CAMLab\, which explores the nexus of cognition\, aesthetics\, and multimedia storyliving through expanded cinema and filmic installations.Dingru Huang is the Rumsey Family Assistant Professor in the Department of International Literary and Cultural Studies. Before joining Tufts\, she was at the University of California\, Berkeley\, as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies. Her research explores the entanglement of cultural production\, technological development\, and ecological imaginations in China and East Asia\, particularly the roles played by nonhuman animals. She has been published in peer-reviewed journals\, such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture\, Ex-Position\, Wenxue\, and the Chung-wai Literary Quarterly.  \n\n\n\nThe Fairbank Center’s film screening series explores the largely unseen early history of independent film in China\, beginning in the late 1980s\, aiming to unearth films long-suppressed by Chinese authorities to fill out the narrative of modern film history in the PRC. \n\n\n\nBumming in Beijing (Original\, Extended Version)\, directed by Wu Wenguang. China\, 1990\, documentary\, 134 min. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/prc-75-film-screening-the-dreamers-revisited-bumming-in-beijing-original-extended-version-featuring-an-introduction-by-eugene-yuejin-wang/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening,Special Event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/bumming.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250223T143000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250223T160000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20250206T170929Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250206T170931Z
UID:39307-1740321000-1740326400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening: This Woman (這個女人)
DESCRIPTION:Purchase tickets\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDirected by Alan Zhang (China\, 2023\, 90 min.). Mandarin with English subtitles.  \n\n\n\nIn her striking debut feature\, filmmaker Alan Zhang explores the life of a 35-year-old woman who\, after losing her decade-long job during the COVID-19 pandemic\, returns to her hometown from Beijing. As she works to support herself\, her parents\, and her child\, she navigates intimate relationships and embarks on a profound journey of self-discovery. Deftly blurring the line between documentary and fiction\, This Woman delves into the role of women in contemporary Chinese society\, questioning the expectations imposed on them and their pursuit of freedom. Awarded the Special Jury Prize at Visions du Réel\, Zhang—a feminist activist\, artist\, and filmmaker—delivers a timely and courageous work that invites reflection and dialogue. \n\n\n\nWatch the trailer. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-this-woman-%e9%80%99%e5%80%8b%e5%a5%b3%e4%ba%ba/
LOCATION:Museum of Fine Arts\, Remis Auditorium\, 465 Huntingon Ave\, Boston\, Massachusetts\, 02115\, United States
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest,Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/this-woman.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250409T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250409T193000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20250310T182439Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250404T230852Z
UID:39752-1744218000-1744227000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening + Discussion – River Elegy (河殇)\, Episodes 1 & 2 featuring Rana Mitter and Yasheng Huang
DESCRIPTION:Rana Mitter\, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations\, Harvard Kennedy SchoolYasheng Huang\, Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management\, MIT Sloan School of ManagementModerator: Dorinda (Dinda) Elliott\, Executive Director\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard University \n\n\n\n\n“It may have been the most important television program ever broadcast in the history of the world.”—Rana Mitter\, BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time\, “The May Fourth Movement\,” December 9\, 2021 \n\n\n\n\nJoin us for a special screening of River Elegy (河殇)\, the landmark 1988 Chinese documentary series that ignited nationwide debate with its bold critique of China’s historical path and traditional culture. The event will feature a panel discussion with distinguished scholars Rana Mitter (Harvard University)\, Yasheng Huang (MIT)\, and Fairbank Center Executive Director Dorinda (Dinda) Elliott. \n\n\n\nWe will present a newly restored digital transfer of the series’ first two episodes\, “In Search of a Dream” and “Destiny”\, both in Chinese with newly translated English-language subtitles. \n\n\n\nFirst aired on CCTV1 in June 1988\, River Elegy uses the color “yellow” (symbolizing the Yellow River and the Yellow Emperor) as a metaphor for cultural and political stagnation\, contrasting it with “blue” (representing the open sea and maritime exploration) as a symbol of modernity and openness. Through poetic narration and a provocative visual collage of archival footage\, the series critiques China’s Confucian traditions and historical isolationism\, arguing that these forces hindered the country’s progress in the 20th century. It calls instead for reform\, global engagement\, and celebrates the economic liberalization taking place under Deng Xiaoping. \n\n\n\nRiver Elegy struck a deep chord with a generation navigating the tensions of modernization. Its writer\, Su Xiaokang\, quickly became one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals. The documentary received high-level endorsement from Party figures including former president Yang Shangkun\, Deng Pufang (son of Deng Xiaoping)\, and premier Zhao Ziyang—each of whom supported and even hosted special screenings of the series. But following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests—which some scholars argue were partly catalyzed by River Elegy’s widespread influence—the series was banned amid a sweeping political crackdown. \n\n\n\nDecades later\, River Elegy remains a powerful historical document. Its themes continue to resonate\, particularly as the liberal values that the series championed—democracy\, human rights\, the rule of law—appear increasingly embattled\, not only in China\, but also in the United States and around the world. \n\n\n\nRana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of several books\, including Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II (2013)\, which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature\, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard\, 2020). His writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs\, the Harvard Business Review\, The Spectator\, The Critic\, and The Guardian. He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world\, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics “Meanwhile in Beijing” is available on BBC Sounds. He is co-author\, with Sophia Gaston\, of the report “Conceptualizing a UK-China Engagement Strategy” (British Foreign Policy Group\, 2020). He won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History\, awarded by the UK Historical Association. He previously taught at Oxford\, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.Yasheng Huang is Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. From 2013 to 2017\, he served as an associate dean in charge of MIT Sloan’s global partnership programs and its action learning initiatives. His previous appointments include faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School. He is the author of 11 books in both English and Chinese and of many academic papers and news commentaries. His book\, The Rise and the Fall of the EAST: How Exams\, Autocracy\, Stability\, and Technology Brought China Success\, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline\, was published by Yale University Press in 2023. He is collaborating with Chinese academics on a book project\, The Needham Question\, based on a comprehensive database on Chinese historical inventions and politics. \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-discussion-river-elegy-%e6%b2%b3%e6%ae%87-episodes-1-2-featuring-rana-mitter-and-yasheng-huang/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Tsai Auditorium (S010)\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-10-at-2.06.20 PM-1.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250430T133000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250430T163000
DTSTAMP:20260519T124620
CREATED:20250411T214600Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T181445Z
UID:39984-1746019800-1746030600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Film Screening\, Part 2 – River Elegy (河殇)\, Episodes 3 - 6 featuring Andrew S. Erickson & Shih-Diing Liu
DESCRIPTION:Andrew S. Erickson\, Professor of Strategy\, China Maritime Studies Institute\, U.S. Naval War College; Visiting Scholar 2024-25\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard UniversityShih-Diing Liu\, Professor of Communication and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies\, University of Macau; Visiting Scholar 2024-25\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard University \n\n\n\nJoin us for the second part of our special screening of River Elegy (河殇)\, the landmark 1988 Chinese documentary series that ignited nationwide debate with its bold critique of China’s historical path and traditional culture. This event will feature commentary from two of our current visiting scholars\, Andrew S. Erickson (U.S. Naval War College) and Shih-Diing Liu (University of Macau). \n\n\n\nWe will present a newly restored digital transfer of the final four episodes of River Elegy: “Aura” (Episode 3)\, “A New Era” (Episode 4)\, “Worries” (Episode 5)\, and “Azure” (Episode 6). All episodes are in Chinese with newly translated\, English-language subtitles. \n\n\n\nFirst aired on CCTV1 in June 1988\, River Elegy uses the color “yellow” (symbolizing the Yellow River and the Yellow Emperor) as a metaphor for cultural and political stagnation\, contrasting it with “blue” (representing the open sea and maritime exploration) as a symbol of modernity and openness. Through poetic narration and a provocative visual collage of archival footage\, the series critiques China’s Confucian traditions and historical isolationism\, arguing that these forces hindered the country’s progress in the 20th century. It calls instead for reform\, global engagement\, and celebrates the economic liberalization taking place under Deng Xiaoping. \n\n\n\nRiver Elegy struck a deep chord with a generation navigating the tensions of modernization. Its writer\, Su Xiaokang\, quickly became one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals. The documentary received high-level endorsement from Party figures including former president Yang Shangkun\, Deng Pufang (son of Deng Xiaoping)\, and premier Zhao Ziyang—each of whom supported and even hosted special screenings of the series. But following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests—which some scholars argue were partly catalyzed by River Elegy’s widespread influence—the series was banned amid a sweeping political crackdown. \n\n\n\nDecades later\, River Elegy remains a powerful historical document. Its themes continue to resonate\, particularly as the liberal values that the series championed—democracy\, human rights\, the rule of law—appear increasingly embattled\, not only in China\, but also in the United States and around the world. \n\n\n\nAndrew S. Erickson is a Professor of Strategy in the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute\, which he helped establish and has served as Research Director\, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He testifies periodically before Congress and briefs leading officials\, including the Secretary of Defense. Erickson helped to escort the Commander of China’s Navy on a visit to Harvard and subsequently to establish\, and to lead the first iteration of\, NWC’s first naval officer exchange program with China. He has received the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal\, NWC’s inaugural Civilian Faculty Research Excellence Award\, and NBR’s inaugural Ellis Joffe Prize for PLA Studies. His research focuses on Indo-Pacific defense\, international relations\, technology\, and resource issues. Dr. Erickson was a 2019-2022 Visiting Scholar.Shih-Diing Liu is Professor of Communication and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies\, University of Macau. Liu’s research focuses on exploring the emotional dynamics of politics\, the formation of popular identity\, the expressive and embodied forms of political practices\, and the psychology of nationalism in contemporary China. His books include The Politics of People: Protest Cultures in China (SUNY Press\, 2019) and Affective Spaces: The Cultural Politics of Emotion in China (Edinburgh University Press\, 2024\, with Wei Shi). Continuing with a focus on emotion from the Affective Spaces project\, his current research explores the intersection of affect and gender in contemporary China. Arguing that Chinese gender has increasingly become an archive of feelings marked by ambivalence toward authorities\, this book project uncovers the power of emotion in negotiating the gendered order. Meanwhile\, he is also working on a book project that explores the emotional capabilities of Artificial Intelligence.Schedule:1:30 pm: Introductory Remarks by Shih-Diing Liu \n\n\n\n1:45 pm: Episode 3: “Aura” & Episode 4: “A New Era” (71 min.)3:00 pm: Comments from Andrew S. Erickson \n\n\n\n3:15 pm: Episode 5: “Worries” & Episode 6: “Azure” (66 min.) \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/film-screening-discussion-river-elegy-%e6%b2%b3%e6%ae%87-episodes-3-6-featuring-andrew-s-erickson-and-shih-diing-liu/
LOCATION:CGIS South S020\, Belfer Case Study Room\, 1730 Cambridge St.\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Film Screening
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