Author: csgchku

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.

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

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.

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.

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

What is to be done after André Bazin (1918–59) and Gilles Deleuze (1925–95)? With the emergence of the digital image in the 1990s and the proliferation of social media platforms afterwards, a renewed understanding of the cinema as a medium that has fundamentally redefined humanity and its relationship with techne (technics) has been debated. In this discussion, Buddhism may offer us new insights into what cinema is and what it can be.

In my presentation, I use Buddhist philosophy to re-examine cinema ontology. I first conduct a close analysis of Bazin’s own text by contextualising it both within European philosophy and in conversation with the Buddhist understanding interdependent relationships. Under such a renewed scrutiny, I argue, reality is perhaps not the ontological ground of the photographic image. Rather, an alaya (storehouse)-consciousness gives rise to the photograph as a technical milieu, which performs reality as a form without any existential value. In this sense, cinema ontology can be understood anew a crisis of the image generated from a deeper perturbation about human existence.

Speaker: Dr Victor Fan

Victor Fan is Senior Lecturer at Film Studies, King’s College London and Film Consultant of the Chinese Visual Festival. His articles appeared in journals including Camera Obscura, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Screen and Film History: An International Journal. His book Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory was published in 2015 by the University of Minnesota Press.

Moderator: Dr Alvin Wong

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

All are welcome!

For enquiries: lylouis@hku.hk

Speaker: Professor Dina Iordanova FRSA
Professor of Global Cinema and Creative Cultures
Director, Institute for Global Cinema and Creative Cultures (IGCCC)
Publisher, St Andrews Film Studies
University of St Andrews, Scotland

Date: 11 December 2017 (Monday)
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Venue: Rm. 4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Moderator: Professor Nicole Huang (Chairperson , Department of Comparative Literature, HKU)

Abstract
There is no other city for cinema like Paris. However, the city’s reputation related to cinema links more to events from the past (such as the first cinema projection in 1895 or the nouvelle vague of the 1060s) rather than to present-day realities. The unique cinematic culture of Paris is best revealed in three spheres. First, Paris is the city which exhibits by far the largest variety of international films and enjoys a cinematic culture that is by far superior to every other city. Then, Paris is home to the widest multicultural group of international film talent, a place where global film professionals are clustered more than any other city. And last, Paris is the city where a great array of global cinema is effectively conceived and produced. Yet, there is little international recognition of these achievements. In this talk, I will aim to examine why the importance of Paris as hub for global cinema remains obscured.

Bio
Dina Iordanova is a professor at University of St Andrews in Scotland and is currently a Visiting Research Professor with the Department of Comparative Literature at HKU. A native of Bulgaria who has also worked in the United States and conducted research across Europe and Asia, Dina is the founder of Film Studies at St Andrews. She has published extensively on matters of global cinema and film cultures. Her most recent book is CINEMAS OF PARIS, with Jean-Michel Frodon.

All are welcome.

Co-organized by:
Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC)
Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Wednesday 29 November 2017
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Venue: Room 4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, the University of Hong Kong

Speakers: Evans Chan, Mei Fong and Timothy O’Leary
Moderator: Ilaria Maria Sala

Panelists:
Evans Chan
‘One of the most singularly innovative and diverse figures in the Chinese cultural world’ (Michael Berry, Speaking in Images), Evans Chan is the director of Raise the Umbrellas (2016), which has been hailed as ‘the most comprehensive documentary’ about Hong Kong’s 2014 democratic movement. Chan’s latest documentary is Death in Montmartre.

Mei Fong
Mei Fong is a Pulitzer-prize winning former journalist, New America fellow and listed as one of Foreign Policy’s Top 50 influencers on US-China relations. She is the author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment (2016). As a form of protest against China’s growing censorship, she released a free digital download of her book in simplified Chinese.

Timothy O’Leary
Timothy O’Leary has lived in Hong Kong since 2001. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, where he is an elected member of HKU Council. He has been an active defender of academic freedom at HKU for a number of years. He has published extensively in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, the critical powers of fiction, and the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. He is co-General Editor of the book series New Critical Humanities at Rowman & Littlefield International. Timothy is PEN Hong Kong’s Secretary.

Moderator:
Ilaria Maria Sala
Ilaria Maria Sala is an-award winning writer and journalist based in Hong Kong. She has been living in Asia since 1988—first in Beijing, then Tokyo and Hong Kong, with long detours in Shanghai and Kathmandu. Her byline has appeared in Le Monde, the New York Times, the Guardian, ArtNews, El Periódico and La Stampa, among others. Her latest book is Letters from China (in Italian). Ilaria is a founding member of PEN Hong Kong.

All are welcome

Co-organized by:
Pen Hong Kong
Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC)
Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: November 28 (Tuesday)
Time: 7 to 8:30pm
Venue: Rm758, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Director-in-Person:
Chan Tze-woon, director of Yellowing (2016)

Author-in-Person:
Antony Dapiran,
author of City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong (2017)

All are Welcome!

DATE: 27 NOVEMBER 2017
TIME: 1600-1730
VENUE: RRST 4.36
SPEAKER: Ray Jiang Linyan
RESPONDENT: Zhang Shimin

Abstract:
In recent decades, many working class Chinese marriage migrants have come to Hong Kong for family reunion. Their living difficulties have caught the attention of the local academy. However, these women show that they can tackle their own problems. This research focuses on the self-organized, mutual aid NGO, Tonggen ???, to reveal how the working class Chinese marriage migrants learn to articulate their demands through active political participation in the host society. They are poised to become an emergent political power that challenges the vision of local democratic politics.

Ray Jiang is an MPhil candidate of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong.

Date: 23 November 2017 (Thursday)
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Venue: Rm. 4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Speaker: Professor Peter I. Barta (University of Surrey; Texas Tech University )
Moderator: Dr. Daniel Vukovich (Comparative Literature, HKU)

The seminar is going to theorise bicultural identity on the basis of the philosophy of the ‘cynics’ of Ancient Greece and Friedrich Nietzsche. Plural identity arises from some form of displacement , such as war, invasion, colonialism, migration, etc. It provides the source for introspection, insight and understanding of difference, owing to the ‘parallax’ that emerges as a result of multifocal vision. It is for this reason that it elicits anxiety and hostility from monodiscursive autocracy whose hold on power is weakened by multivoiced dialogue, questions, and the availability of undesirable knowledge. I will investigate two trends in the emergence from art to science of medicine as sources both for confluence and conflict. In my analysis of Lu Xun’s medically inspired fiction, dispositions towards Chinese medicine will serve as a gauge of attitudes to tradition (cf Asclepius) and modernity (cf Hippocrates).

Professor Peter I. Barta, appointed to a Personal Chair in Comparative Literature at the University of Surrey in 2000, was invited to take up a Professorship in Russian and Comparative Literature at the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University in 2012. He specializes in Russian Literature and Culture, Comparative Literature, literary and critical theory [narratology, (post-)structuralism, (post-)modernism, postcolonial studies] and the novel. He has particular expertise in Russian, English and European Modernism (especially James Joyce), 19th-century fiction (especially Pushkin, Turgenev and Tolstoy,); comparative literary studies (Anglo-French, Franco-Russian, East/West); the Classical Tradition (Ovidian metamorphosis in modernist texts; Byzantium and “the Third Rome”). His work focuses on issues of mythic consciousness, post-colonial studies, Empire and identity and contemporary cultural trends in post-Soviet Russia and Europe.

All are welcome

Co-organized by:
Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC)
Department of Comparative Literature, HKU