Month: May 2022

Speaker:
Crystal Kwok, Director, Producer & Writer, Blurring the Color Line

Introduction by:
Gina Marchetti, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU
Moderator:
Staci Ford, Affiliated Associate Professor, Department of History and School of Modern Languages and Cultures, HKU

Date: Thursday, May 5, 2022
Screening: 6:45 pm Hong Kong Time
Q&A: 8:15 pm Hong Kong Time
Click here for the Zoom recording

What does it mean to be caught in between two worlds?
Following director Crystal Kwok’s personal journey of discovery, BLURRING THE COLOR LINE digs deep into how her grandmother’s family navigated life as neighborhood grocery store owners in the Black community of Augusta, Georgia during the Jim Crow era. The film weaves family anecdotes and neighborhood memories to open up critical conversations about liminal states & anti-Blackness in the Chinese community, and serves to disrupt racial narratives and bridge divides.

Crystal Kwok – Director, Producer & Writer
Crystal Kwok is an award winning filmmaker who established her career in Hong Kong as an actress, writer, director, and talk show host. She won the audience choice awards at the 2000 Deauville Asian Film Festival for her debut feature length film, The Mistress. As a strong women’s advocate, her talk show, “Kwoktalk” broke boundaries in Hong Kong with conversations about women and sexuality. Kwok is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Hawaii in Performance Studies and a recipient of the prestigious East West Center Scholar awards.

This event is organised by the Faculty of Arts’ Committee on Gender Equality and Diversity (CGED) and the Department of Comparative Literature’s Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), with the support of the Gender Studies Programme, School of Humanities, and the Women’s Studies Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong.

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Speaker:
Professor Yiu-Wai Chu, Professor and Director of the Hong Kong Studies Programme, HKU

Discussant: Dr. Winnie Yee, MALCS, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Moderator: Dr. Esther C.M. Yau, MALCS, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Time: 6:00 pm (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: On Zoom

The 2010s will probably enter the annals of Chinese film history as the decade of change, and major changes include, among others, the “blockbusterization” of main melody films. Main melody films are indeed not new to the Mainland market. Simply put, they used to refer to propaganda works that paid tribute to the nation, the party and the army, and in this sense their history is as long as that of Chinese cinema. In the new millennium, they had gradually grown into the main genre in Chinese cinema, and its “blockbusterization” was arguably the most phenomenal development of the Chinese film industry in the 2010s. This book endeavours to go across the Mainland-Hong Kong border to focus on Hong Kong filmmakers’ contributions to main melody blockbusters that affected both regions in this decade.

Yiu-Wai Chu is Professor and Director of the Hong Kong Studies Programme at the University of Hong Kong, and Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Humanities. His research interests focus on postcolonialism, globalization and Hong Kong culture. His recent English publications include Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013), Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017) and Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018).

Enquiries: Georgina Challen – gchallen@hku.hk

For updates on future events hosted by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, please visit https://csgchku.wordpress.com/

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