gchallen Past Events

2018 Situations International Conference The Culture Industries in Asia: Into the Digital Age

Co-hosted by Department of Comparative Literature, HKU & Department of English BK 21 Project, Yonsei University

Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

November 30, 2018 (Friday), 9am – 5pm

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Plenary Talk: Globalization, Digitalization and Renationalization
Koichi Iwabuchi, Monash U

Panel 1: New Media

Panel 2: Politics of Identities

Plenary Talk: The Fatality and Natality of Hong Kong Film Industry
Laikwan Pang, CUHK

Panel 3: History, Music, and Stardom

December 1, 2018 (Saturday), 9am – 1:30pm

Plenary Talk: Becoming Black – Exploring Korean Hip Hop in the Age of Hallyu
Kyunghyun Kim, UC Irvine

Panel 4: Cultural Phenomenon

Panel 5: Gender and Media Representations

Details and Registration: https://goo.gl/XnmhyK

gchallen Past Events

Women’s Summit on Film in Hong Kong Higher Education

The Women’s Summit on Film was held on the 23rd November 2018. Dedicated to women involved in teaching, research, and administration related to film production and cinema studies in Hong Kong higher education. The event was sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, and involved participants from higher education institutions as well as filmmakers, film critics and film festival directors.

Given the recent initiatives at the University of Hong Kong such as HeForShe involving gender equality and diversity, the Summit intended to initiate an expanded conversation about the current state of women in film production, research, and education in Hong Kong.

Conversations revolved around topics such as:

  • Challenges faced by women teaching film in Hong Kong
  • Academic advancement
  • Researching women in film in the university
  • Funding for film research and filmmaking in the Hong Kong university system
  • Film festivals, women’s festivals and the Hong Kong university
  • #MeToo in film school
  • Sexism and bias in academia
  • Queer/feminist teaching, research, and advocacy
  • Hong Kong filmmakers in a global context

The CSGC is in the process of planning a follow-up #HeforShe summit to involve male academic staff in the conversation which is to be held in the Spring Semester of 2019. For more updates, follow our page.

gchallen Past Events

Global Cinema at Global Airlines: Navigating and Curating

In recent years, since the introduction of individually controlled multi-channel entertainment systems on-board, it has become customary to see a growing range of international cinematic selections being made available to airline passengers. The film selection is no longer dominated by Hollywood fare; the average long-haul flights now feature films sourced out of Bollywood, East Asia, and Europe, as well as from other cinematic traditions—and the selection grows in size and in variety, especially on flights that bridge together far flung parts of the world. It is an unprecedented situation—to see global cinema “live”, as it were, on board of global airlines—that turns the airlines into territories of particular conviviality, as no similar levels of diversity are found in the actual geographical territories of the countries where the airlines are based. Some research questions that come up in this context, include: Is it possible to speculate that the programme that airlines make available to audiences on long-haul flights is reflective of a specific understanding of diversity and cosmopolitanism that underwrite their choices? What message does the multi-faceted and multi-national entertainment menu of global airlines convey in a political context that is defined by backlash against globalisation and cosmopolitanism? Can one claim that global airlines are now one of the few platforms where global cinema is recognized and represented in its largest assortment? In this talk, I will focus on some specific case studies, as well as discuss matters of navigating and curating an offer that is growing in complexity.

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Speaker: Prof. Dina Iordanova
Moderator: Dr Winnie Yee (MALCS Programme Coordinator)

Speaker Bio:

Dina Iordanova is Professor of Global Cinema and Creative Cultures at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She has written on the various places where international cinema could be found – from ethnic food shops to the cinemas of Paris, from red carpeted film festival to online platforms like MUBI. As a global traveler, she admires the variety of films found on global airlines. Flying to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, British Airways, or Emirates is an opportunity to further her research.

Date: 19 November 2018 (Monday)
Time: 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Venue: Room 4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

gchallen Past Events

Action Films: A Supergenre from a Transnational and Comparative Perspective

Action films have remained as one of the most important and influential genres. Beyond action films, action is an element widely adopted by other genres such as sci-fi, comedy and crime, etc. In different countries and regions, action films have their respective origins and evolved in the interactions with each other. The transnational and cross-cultural integrations and integrations of cross-genres and cross-subgenres have made action films a hybrid genre, in other words, a Super-genre. This classification helps us recognize the core of this super-genre (or the shared cores of these genres). Self-evidently, the super-genre relies on actions much more than words. From an iconographic view, it centers on the images of human body. Action films always present conflicts which are between bodies or between bodies and space. And these conflicts are presented as visible violent activities of bodies, in the forms of fists fight, swords dance, gun fire, chasing, explosions or any other combats with tools.

gchallen Past Events

Workshop on Publishing in the Arts and Humanities

This workshop addresses questions postgraduate, post-doctorate, and junior researchers in the arts and humanities may have concerning the publication of their scholarship in peer-reviewed, professional, trade, popular, and other venues. Professor Iordanova will introduce the various publication outlets open to academics and the relative impact these have within and outside specific disciplines. She explores traditional outlets as well as other means of disseminating research including blogs, online newsletters, video essays, and other less orthodox avenues. Participants are invited to bring their own publication problems and queries for discussion within the context of an informal conversation on “publish or perish” in the digital age.

csgc – publishing (dina) – to-print
gchallen Past Events

Nostalgia and New Chinese Cinema in the 1980s

How is nostalgia relevant to New Chinese Cinema? Its avowed forward-looking politics notwithstanding, New Chinese Cinema in the 1980s surprisingly sustains nostalgic for the foregoing age. The talk will introduce the conceptualisation of nostalgia in both China and the West before drawing a detailed picture of the nostalgic cinema. King of the Children (Haizi Wang, Chen Kaige, 1987) will be read as an example, in which sundry voices of the past bespeak a reflective and non-political nostalgia. The talk also welcomes inspirations on the relation between nostalgia and Hong Kong New Wave.

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Speaker: Mr. September Liu
Moderator: Prof. Dina Iordanova

Speaker Bio:
September Liu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Film Studies, University of St.Andrews. His current research focuses on nostalgia and Chinese New Waves. He has received an MPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Downing College, University of Cambridge, and two BAs in English and Chinese Literature at Peking University.

Date:6 November 2018 (Tue)
Time: 16:00 – 17:30
Venue:Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU