Author: csgchku

Colleagues, former students and friends from the Department of Comparative Literature got together online on July 4, 2022, to thank Professor Gina Marchetti for her important contributions to the Faculty, University, and Hong Kong film community. Gina is departing HKU to take up a new position as Chair of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute in New York, with effect from August 1, 2022.

Professor Nicole Huang, who recently stepped down after five years as Chair of the Department, started with a brief overview of Gina’s nineteen years of service to the University. During her time with the Department, Gina published four monographs, four co-edited volumes, and over sixty articles and book chapters. As Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), she further encouraged the global circulation of ideas and research. Through her chairing of the Faculty’s Gender Task Force and Committee on Gender Equality and Diversity, she has been at the forefront of efforts to eliminate bias and enhance the visibility of gender and diversity concerns on campus. Nicole also praised Gina’s dedication to her students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, and her groundbreaking efforts for the University’s Common Core, which led to her receiving both the University’s and the University Grants Council’s Team Teaching Awards in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Gina’s research has had a significant impact on the work of Hong Kong filmmakers, particularly Hong Kong women filmmakers, and has raised awareness of the importance of Hong Kong film both locally and internationally. Her most recent project on filmmakers and transnational China in the twenty-first century resulted in the creation of a website that features biographical information and other materials on over two hundred women. Together with Dr. Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park and Dr. Stacilee Ford, Gina pioneered the world’s first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Hong Kong cinema: Hong Kong Cinema Through a Global Lens.

Tributes followed from some of the many people whose lives have been touched by Gina’s incredible commitment to her work and to fostering an inclusive environment in which all feel welcomed and valued. Speakers shared their experiences of Gina as a mentor, leader, teacher, and role model. They praised her encyclopedic film knowledge, intellectual courage, commitment to social justice, and willingness to embrace new technologies in teaching and learning. Colleagues from the Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI) celebrated Gina’s inspiring work on the MOOC with the creation of her very own avatar. Former students fondly remembered their lunches with Gina during which they discussed new ideas and connected with film professionals and scholars. Colleagues thanked her for her support and invaluable guidance in their career development. Everyone was unanimous in their appreciation of her warmth and kindness, and ability to inspire people to give their best.

Gina will remain connected with the Department in her capacity as Honorary Professor and we look forward to exploring new opportunities for collaboration. We wish her all the best as she embarks on the next chapter of her career and thank her again for all she has done for the Department, Faculty, University, and the Hong Kong film community.

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.

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).

Speaker:
Qian Cheng, MPhil student in the Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Respondent:
Nicole Huang, Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU

Date: Thursday, April 28, 2022
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: On Zoom

Pema Tseden is the first Tibetan filmmaker whose feature films are recognized both domestically and globally. In this talk, I offer an analysis of his debut film The Silent Holy Stones (2005). The film juxtaposes the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West with its many modern adaptations and critiques the clerical institutions of religion in contemporary Tibet. With this film, Pema Tseden criticizes the traditions of Tibetan society and challenges the expectations of nativists. His cross-cultural background with proficiency in two languages and two medias allows him to inspect his home culture and compatriots at some distance. The emergence of Pema Tseden, whose stories often depict the transformations in current Tibetan society, is often generalized by scholars as an ethnic minority’s attempt to realistically document the invasion of modernity and lament the disintegration of traditions due to China’s ethnic policy. However, the minimal presence of the Han Chinese in his films indicates that he deliberately puts aside the controversial Sino-Tibetan relations. My research argues against previous scholarship’s reduction of Pema Tseden to a loyal representative of his ethnic community and highlights his intellectual ambition to situate Tibetan culture in a global framework.

Qian Cheng is an MPhil student in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include visual studies and modern literature in East Asia. She is currently working on Tibetan popular culture in contemporary China.

Speaker: Ying Xing, PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Supervisor: J. Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU

Respondent: Catherine E. Clark, Associate Professor of History and French Studies, MIT History

Date: Friday, April 8, 2022
Time: 10:00 am Hong Kong Time
Venue: On Zoom

In this talk, I engage with Dai Wangshu’s reading of André Malraux’s “Revolutionary China” to explore unorthodox leftists’ social and political situations during the 1920s and 1930s. I argue that the escalating political extremism in Europe and China inspires them to learn from their remote counterparts and shapes their literary and political ideas. Despite being criticized for lacking revolutionary spirit by communists, French and Chinese unorthodox leftists insisted on the independence of literature from politics during the interwar period. Yet, by the late-1930s, both Malraux and Dai assumed a clear political standpoint when Stalin gained absolute power and Japan invaded China. Focusing on both writers’ literary and political activities, I present how the shift of unorthodox leftists’ attitudes to the literature-politics relationship occurs. Moreover, reading Dai’s translation of Malraux, I reveal how the nature of Chinese nationalism changes over time, from anti-imperialist salvation to anti-Japanese patriotism intertwined with vague anti-fascist internationalism.

Ying Xing is a second-year Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests cover modern European Intellectual history, transnational history, and postcolonial theories. She is currently working on the global spread of Maoism, with a focus on the entangled history between France and China in the 20th century.

The 25^th Anniversary Edition of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival runs for three weeks, from March 21-April 10. This year’s festival theme is ENTANGLEMENTS.

For the full festival program of over 65 events, check out www.ithaca.edu/fleff

Cinemapolis will host 25 films on its virtual cinema platform and three in-person special event screenings and talkbacks at the theater with filmmakers and community groups.  

Feature-length documentary and narrative films from 16 countries including Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, China, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Kosovo, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Tunisia, United Kingdom, and United States will each have a one-week run on the Eventive platform.  

12 interactive discussion-driven  Zoom talkbacks with filmmakers, archivists, activists, musicians, journalists, and scholars from around the country and across the globe are free  and open to the public each weekend of the festival. Film screenings, which can be watched anytime in the week prior, are asynchronous to the talkbacks. 

Speakers include Louis Massiah, Yi Cui, Rikun Zhu, Tony Buba, Carmel Curtis, Scott MacDonald, John Scott, Deborah Hoard, Abel Sanchez, Andres Alegria, Aisha Sultan, Trish McAdam, Hai Wen, and Jinyan Zeng. 

This year’s program features: 

*Special focus on dissident films from China and Hong Kong by women or dealing with sexuality.
*In-person New York State premiere of Ithaca College professor John Scott’s new feature documentary, Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing (2022), with Ithacans on the production team on Sat April 8. 
*Celebration of the work-in-progress documentary on Ithaca civil rights legend Dorothy Cotton, with film director Deborah Hoard, in partnership with AKA of Ithaca on Sat April 2. 
*Five-film program of innovative environmental films probing water, coal mining and opioids, farmworkers organizing, housing, and gig workers.
*Special three-film retrospective of the works of legendary African American film director William Greaves (1926-2014) including Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (1989), Nationtime (1972) and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (1971). 
*Four-film programming stream on contemporary French transnational cinemas.
*Focus on documentary and narrative films from Africa.
*Stream on films exploring music and politics.
*Stream exploring cutting-edge Eastern European narrative films from Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

Tickets are US$35 for a five-pass, US$125 for an all-access pass to all 28 screenings, and US$10 per individual screening. They are available for purchase via the Cinemapolis Eventive portal (https://virtualcinemapolis.eventive.org/welcome) starting on March 1.

Partners for the FLEFF screenings at Cinemapolis include the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong; Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia; Art Mattan Films; UniFrance; Museo del Cine Pablo Ducros Hicken, Argentina; the Park Center for Independent Media, and Louise Archambault Greaves as well as the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, the Department of Health Promotion and Physical Education,  and the MBA Program in Entertainment and Media Management at Ithaca College. 

Patricia Zimmermann serves as Director of the FLEFF, and Brett Bossard, Executive Director of Cinemapolis, is associate programmer this year. Leah Shafer is associate producer for the talkbacks.   

Date: Thursday, 17 March 2022
Time: 9:00 pm Hong Kong Time (GMT +8)

The Lonely Hearts Club Show is a unique performance directed by Anuja Ghosalkar (Drama Queen Theatre Co.). It features the intimate lives of 9 amazing participants, many of whom turned performers for the very first time with this production. Through devised erotica texts based on their own experiences, our performers challenge the viewer to question their ideas of desire, attraction, vulnerability, and our interaction with the internet in all its vastness. The performance will be intercut with opportunities for Q&A and for viewers to share their own experiences.

Moderator: J. Daniel Elam, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Thursday, March 17, 2022
Time: 9:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: On Zoom

Registration is required. This event is for 18+ only. By registering for the show, you are confirming you are above 18 years of age. The show has explicit content & images. Viewer discretion is advised.

The Show was developed with the support of the Goethe-Institut in Mumbai. Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at the production. https://bit.ly/LHCpreview

Date: Wednesday, 9 March 2022
Time: 10:00 am (GMT +8)

Speaker: Clara Iwasaki, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Alberta
Discussant: Nicole Huang, Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU
Moderator: Elizabeth LaCouture, Director and Assistant Professor, Gender Studies Programme, School of Humanities, HKU

Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2022
Time: 10:00 am Hong Kong Time
Venue: On Zoom
Click here for the event recording.

This talk focuses on the way three authors, Xiao Hong, Agnes Smedley and Eileen Chang, circulated around the transpacific. All three writers are strongly associated with autobiographical writings and in the case of Xiao and Chang, their sensational biographies (particularly their love lives) have frequently overshadowed their writing. All three women deployed their literary personae, but their control over their image was never absolute. Xiao Hong and Agnes Smedley were friends and more importantly, they circulated each other’s works and literary images. Xiao Hong sees in Smedley’s work a universal feminist struggle. Smedley sees in Xiao Hong a vision of a progressive and particularly Chinese proletarian feminism. For Eileen Chang, her autobiographical novels remained unpublished until many years after her death because her stark self-revelation was inconsistent with the image of old Shanghai glamor that her earlier fiction had conjured up.

Clara Iwasaki is an assistant professor in the department of East Asian Studies at the University of Alberta. Her book Rethinking the Modern Chinese Canon: Refractions across the Transpacific was published by Cambria in 2020.

This event is co-presented by the Committee on Gender Equality and Diversity and the Gender Studies Programme at the University of Hong Kong, with the support of the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC) and the Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU.

Speaker: Lalitha Gopalan, Associate Professor, Department of Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas in Austin, USA
Discussant: Gina Marchetti, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Moderator: J. Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Thursday, 17 February 2022
Time: 11:00 am (Hong Kong Time) on Zoom (9:00 pm on 16 February, Austin, Tx Time)

Cinemas Dark and Slow in Digital India provides a sustained engagement with contemporary Indian feature films from outside the mainstream to expand the scope of film studies that have focused so far on the dominance of Bollywood. Lalitha Gopalan assembles films from Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Trivandrum, in addition to independent productions in Bombay cinema, as a way of privileging less studied works that deserve critical attention. Through close readings of films and a deep investigation of film style, this book draws attention to the advent of digital technologies while remaining fully cognizant of ‘the digital’ and considering the change in the global circulation of film and finance. This dual focus on the techno-material conditions of Indian cinema and the film narrative offers a complete picture of changing narratives and shifting genres and styles.

Lalitha Gopalan is Associate Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film, affiliate faculty in the Department of Asian Studies, South Asia Institute, and Core Faculty in the Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Texas in Austin, USA. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of Film Theory, Feminist Film Theory, Contemporary World Cinemas, Indian Cinemas, Genre Films, and Experimental Film and Video. Essays and books written by her include Cinemas Dark and Slow in Digital India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021; Orient Blackswan 2021), Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema (London: BFI Publishing, 2002) and Bombay (London: BFI Modern Classics, 2005); and the edited volume The Cinema of India (London: Wallflower Press, 2010).

Speaker: Abolfazl Ahangari, PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Supervisor: J. Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU
Respondent: Siavash Saffari, Associate Professor of West Asian Studies, Seoul National University

Date: Wednesday, 16 February 2022
Time: 5:00 pm (Hong Kong Time) on Zoom

In this seminar, I reread Dariush Shayegan’s Asia Confronts the West (1978) to reconsider secularism as a philosophical issue. To him, secularism is a historical force originated in Europe and aimed at inverting the epistemic world structure from the metaphysical to the earthly. It has led to a grand historical shift which is supposedly the moment of the formation of the ‘new world’ and the birth of the post-enlightenment subject. Following this approach, I argue that Shayegan’s view toward secularization can be comprehended as a process of ‘contraction’ through which every existing thing-in-the-world has to be diminished through being divided from itself to appear as a ‘knowable object’. More specifically, becoming secular [i.e., worldly] means to be contracted, being detached from one’s mystical core, the excess, or ‘the history’ and letting things appear as a ‘pure object’ in and for the present. But paradoxically, the secularized thing or the divided object, instead of becoming more secular [or worldly], has appeared to be vulgar, has lost its senses, and has paved the way for the formation of the divided subject. In this seminar, I focus on this contradictory aspect of secularism to provide a framework for thinking about the condition of (post)modernity, the senses of history, and the possibility of the West/non-West binary within the context of secular history.

Abolfazl Ahangari is a 2^nd year PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests are world & comparative literature, philosophy of history and literature, anticolonialism & postcolonial theory, world modernities, and political and liberation theology.