csgchku Past Events

Finding Kukan: A Film Screening, Commentary and Audience Q&A with Dir. Robin Lung

In the award-winning documentary Finding KUKAN, director Robin Lung investigates the compelling story of Hawaiʻi born Li Ling-Ai, the uncredited producer of KUKAN. KUKAN is a landmark color documentary about World War II China that received an Academy Award in 1942 before becoming “lost” for decades. In Finding KUKAN, Lung discovers a badly damaged print of KUKAN and pieces together the inspirational tale behind Li and her cameraman Rey Scott. Robin Lung will present the full 75-minute documentary Finding KUKAN (in English with Chinese subtitles), speak about her 8-year-long filmmaking journey, and answer questions from the audience.

About Robin Lung:

Robin Lung is a 4th generation Chinese American from Hawaiʻi with an 18-year history of bringing untold minority and womenʻs stories to film. A Stanford University and Hunter College graduate, she became a filmmaker after successful careers in book publishing and higher education. Lung made her directorial debut with Washington Place: Hawai‘i’s First Home, a 30-minute documentary for PBS Hawai‘i about the legacy of Hawaiʻi’s Queen Lili‘uokalani and her personal home. She was the associate producer for the national PBS documentary Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority, and producer/director of the feature documentary FindingKUKAN, which was selected to be broadcasted nationally on PBS World’s America ReFramed series and has won multiple awards at film festivals across America.

Date: Monday 20 May 2019

Time: 2:30-4:30pm

Venue: 2.42, 2/F, Sir Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

csgchku Past Events

#WontBeErased: Protecting LGBTQ Youth from Conversion Therapy

In this fire-chat series, nuclear scientist Sam Brinton from the US will share his personal journey in undergoing gay conversion therapy when he was young.  He will discuss the challenges he faced and how homophobia has impacted him.  He has now transformed that traumatic experience into a positive experience and influences other people to combat homophobia.  Sam has been an important voice in the LGBTQ movement in US and will also share his experience in activism.

About Sam:

Sam is currently the Head of Advocacy and Government Affairs of the Trevor Project, an organisation providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ young people under 25. Being a nuclear scientist and queer activist and from helping people to understand the differences in advanced nuclear reactors to the dangerous practices of anti-gay conversion therapy, Sam has the passion to change the world.  This brings him to speak before the United Nations and the US Congress etc.  He has also been featured in interviews with TIME, The Guardian and many others. 

More about IDAHOT:

Held every year on May 17, IDAHOT draws the attention of policymakers, opinion leaders, social movers and shakers, the general public and the media to the violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) people globally.

The theme of IDAHOT 2019 is “Biphobia”. From now until May 17, Pink Alliance will be organizing a series of events to help educate the public and increase their understanding of this issue. By distributing pamphlets, we wish to promote the understanding of “Bi+Pan” sexuality. By conducting other outreach activities, including talks on gay conversion therapy by the U.S. queer activist Sam Brinton, a theatre workshop entitled “The Same, Not The Same?”, a photography / art exhibition by local Bi artists, and school talks on IDAHOT, we hope to further raise awareness of the prejudice faced by bisexuals in both the general and queer communities.

Moderators: Dr Alvin Wong and Dr Brenda Alegre

Date: Monday 6 May 2019

Time: 3:00-4:30pm

Venue: 4.36, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

csgchku Past Events

The Flavors and Feelings of China’s New Youth: Capitalist Soft Power and the Rise of a Global Technological Society

This talk examines from a post-Marxist perspective the tremendous generation gap that has opened in China with the start of the 90’s generation and which now includes the 00’s as well. After detailing a number of associated phenomena, it examines the likely causes of these developments, including especially market reforms and soft power. It discusses the concerns and responses these changes have provoked among policymakers, educators and parents. It concludes by focusing on growing tensions between sometimes conflicting policies and reactions to them, and speculates on longer-term implications.

About the speaker:

Josef Gregory Mahoney, PhD, is Professor of Politics at East China Normal University (ECNU); Executive Director of the International Center for Advanced Political Studies (ECNU); Founder and Director of the International Graduate Program in Politics (ECNU); and Associate Editor of the US-based Journal of Chinese Political Science (SSCI). In addition to scholarly publications, he’s a regular contributor to ICS, ShenzhenTV, CCTV, CGTN, BBC and CRI news programs. He was a member of the Chinese team that translated Jiang Zemin’s Selected Works into English and a Senior Researcher with the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (中共中央编译局).

Date: Thursday 2 May 2019

Time: 4-6pm

Venue: 7.58, 7/F, Sir Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

All are welcome.

For enquiries, please contact Christine Vicera at viceracn@hku.hk

csgchku Past Events

We Have Boots: A Film Screening and Q&A with Director Evans Chan

We Have Boots is a moving sequel to Raise the Umbrellas, featuring young activists, Agnes Chow, Ray Wong, Alex Chow, Tommy Cheung; artist Kacey Wong; legislator Shiu Ka-chun; and Occupy initiators, Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man. In the post-Umbrella era of disqualification and prosecution, they reflect on their personal paths – from pursuing graduate studies or seeking political asylum overseas, to accepting the political cost of dissent by confronting the prospect of imprisonment. “Affecting… intellectual discussions blending into the melancholic meditative space of post-Occupy Hong Kong… [We Have Boots is a film] about holding on to hope despite despair.” (HKOI, 14/1/19)

About the Director:

Evans Yiu Shing Chan is a New York- and Hong Kong-based critic, librettist and an independent filmmaker of more than a dozen fiction and documentary films, which have been screened around the world. His directorial debut To Liv(e)(1991) was listed by Time Out as one of the 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films. A critical anthology about his work, Postcolonalism, Diaspora, and Alternative Histories: The Cinema of Evans Chan was published by the HKU Press in 2015. We Have Boots is the sequel to his acclaimed documentary Raise the Umbrellas (2016).

Date: Tuesday 23 April 2019
Time: 5:30-8pm
Venue: CPD 3.04, Sir Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

All are welcome.

csgchku Past Events

Global Sexualities: Weimar Berlin and the Birth of a Global Sexology

In March 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneering sexologist and homosexual rights activist, opened the Institute of Sexual Science in central Berlin. Recognized as the first of its kind, the Institute became an international magnet, attracting both medical professionals and curious visitors from all over Europe, the Americas, and East Asia. Until Nazis destroyed the Institute in the spring of 1933, Hirschfeld and his colleagues conducted research and counseled patients. This included personalized advice on birth control, on sexual intimacy, and on strategies for coping with homosexual desire. For male and female cross-dressers, who adopted what today might be described as trans identities, the Institute pioneered hormonal treatments and gender confirmation surgery. Members of the Institute not only published their research in scientific journals but also popularized their work in print and film media. Despite its relatively brief twelve-year existence, the Berlin Institute became a global inspiration for future such programs, including the American Kinsey Institute, founded in 1947.

Date: Thursday, 18th April, 2019
Time: 6-7:30 PM
Venue: 4.36, 4/f Sir Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Speaker’s bio:

Dr. Robert Beachy received his PhD in European history at the University of Chicago in 1998. He has taught at Wake Forest University, Goucher College, and since 2014 as Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College of Yonsei University.  He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and prizes, including a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, residential fellowships at the National Humanities Center (Duke, NC), and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Dr. Beachy’s first book, The Soul of Commerce: Credit, Property, and Politics in Leipzig, 1750- 1840 (Brill, 2005) examined the role of early modern social ties and commercial culture in shaping political reform in Germany. Most recently, he published Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (Knopf, 2014; Vintage PB, 2015), which won the Randy Shilts Award and has since appeared in German and Italian translations. He is now working on a monograph about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.

csgchku Past Events

Minority German Literature, Black Internationalism, and Futurity

Moderator: Dr. Daniel Vukovich, Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Once celebrated by the award of a literary prize dedicated to “migrant authors,” minority German literature has become a staple of contemporary world literature. This talk analyzes the rise of the Afro-German literary movement, its concerns with social justice, race, gender, and poetics, and the commonalities it shares with German Turkish literature and performance through tropes of blackness. Second, the presentation poses questions about the relations between minority German literature and black internationalism as an early form of exchange and activism that contributes to world literature in Western and non-Western contexts. The talk concludes by considering the function of futurity in minority literatures.

Speaker bio:

Arina Rotaru is a Lecturer at NYU Shanghai and a visitor at the Center for the Study of Cultures and Globalization at the University of Hong Kong. She holds a PhD in German Studies and Comparative Literature from Cornell University and her research covers avant-garde literature and film, postcolonial studies, world literature. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of World Literature, Germanic Review, Forum for Modern Language Studies and edited collections on Worlding Asia, Totalitarian Arts, and Aesthetics and Politics. She is currently working on two book projects on contemporary avant-garde literature in twenty-first German-speaking literature and on diasporic poetics.

Date: 10 April 2019
Time: 2-3:30pm
Venue: 4.36, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

All are welcome.

For general enquiries, please contact Christine Vicera at viceracn@hku.hk

csgchku Past Events

Melon Conference @ HKU: Women in Science Fiction

Speakers: Jo Walton, Aliette de Bodard, Regina Kanyu Wang, Rebecca F. Kuang

Speakers’ bio:
Jo Walton
Jo Walton is author of 13 Sci-Fi and fantasy novels, with her latest, Lent, due out in May. She has won many awards including Hugo and Nebula awards for Among Others, and the Tiptree Award for My Real Children in 2015. Jo is from Wales, but emigrated to Montreal in Canada in 2002. She plans to live to be 99 and write a book every year.

Aliette de Bodard
Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories that have garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and two British Science Fiction Association Awards

Regina Kanyu Wang
Regina Kanyu Want is a bilingual writer from Shanghai, and graduate of Fudan University. She is a member of Shanghai Writer’s Association and the World Chinese Sci-Fi Association, and has been invited as a guest of Shanghai-Taipei Literary camp, the Euro-Asia Economic Forum and Sun Yat-Sen University Writing Residency.

Rebecca F. Kuang
Rebecca F. Kuang was born in Guangzhou, emigrated to the US in 2000, and has a BA from Georgetown University. Her debut novel The Poppy War was published by Harper Voyager in 2018 and was a Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist and one of Time’s Best Books of 2018. The sequel The Dragon Republic comes out in August

Moderators:
Dr. Alvin Wong, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Mr. William Lau, English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Date: Friday 22 March 2019
Time: 4-6 PM
Venue: 4.36, 4/F, Sir Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
 
Register at goo.gl/WPVK1x for a chance to win free tickets to Melon 2019: Aliens on the Galactic Silk Road!

For more information on Melon, please visit http://www.melon-x.com/

csgchku Past Events

The Art of Film Festival Programming

How do films circulate internationally and what role do film markets, film festivals, and film venues play in this
phenomenon?

Three programmers who specialise in Asian cinema will discuss these
matters along with their individual strategies, training, and success
stories during this special panel. All three panelists are in Hong Kong for Filmart and the Hong Kong International Film Festival so particular attention will be given as to how these two events empower them to do what they do more effectively.

Speakers:
Dr Elena Pollacchi
Elena Pollacchi is Lecturer in Chinese Studies. She has taught courses on Chinese cinema and culture at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and at Gothenburg University (Sweden). She is also programmer for Chinese and South Korean film at the Venice International Film Festival. Her research encompasses the Chinese film market in its transnational connections, Chinese documentary film, and film festivals. Her recent publications include chapters in Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (eds. C. Berry, L. Robinson, Palgrave Macmillan 2017), Taiwan Cinema: International Reception and Social Change (eds. K. Chiu, M. Rawnsley, G. Rawnsley, Routledge, 2017) and Screening China’s Soft Power (P. Voci, L.Hui; Routledge, 2018), and the article “Extracting narratives from reality: Wang Bing’s counter-narrative of the China Dream” for the Journal of Documentary Studies (Special Issue: Engagement, Witnessing and Activism: Independent Chinese Documentary Filmmakers Different Positions, Approaches and Aesthetics), 11:3 (2017).

Prof Andrew Willis
Andy Willis is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford, Senior Visiting Curator: Film at HOME in Manchester, and a founder member of The Chinese Film Forum UK. He has written widely on film related topics with a special interest in popular cinemas and UK distribution and exhibition trends. He has curated numerous film seasons including Visible Secrets: Hong Kong’s Women Filmmakers (2009) and CRIME: Hong Kong Style (2016).

Mr Samuel Jamier
Samuel Jamier is the Executive Director of the critically-acclaimed New York Asian Film Festival, which is known for its outstanding selection of entertainment and arthouse films. He was previously the chief programmer for the Japan Society and was in charge of the Japan Cuts Film Festival. Highly knowledgeable and familiar with Asian films and regional industries, Jamier was in Singapore as part of the recently concluded SGIFF 2018, where he served as an International Advisor on the Silver Screen Awards Panel.

Moderator: Dr Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Wednesday 20 March 2019
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Venue: CPD LG.08, Centennial Campus, HKU
 
All are welcome.

csgchku Past Events

Book Talk: Re-inventing Film Stardom in Digital Culture

As Chinese performers have become more visible on global screens, their professional images – once the preserve of studios and agents – have been increasingly relayed and reworked by film fans. Web technology has made searching, poaching, editing, posting and sharing texts significantly easier, and by using a variety of seamless and innovative methods a new mode of personality construction has been developed. With case studies of high-profile stars like Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen, this ground-breaking book examines transnational Chinese stardom as a Web-based phenomenon, and as an outcome of the participatory practices of cyber fans.

This talk focuses on the star-making phenomenon in the backdrop of digital culture. The advent of Web technology and fan participation enable ordinary audiences of various cultural backgrounds to readily transpose filmic and publicity materials about famed figures from DVD to fan-site, from movie website to blog, realizing distinct star-fan dynamics.

Speaker’s bio: Dorothy Wai Sim Lau is an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include digital culture, cyberculture, Chinese-language cinema, transnational cinema, stardom and fandom. Her publications appear in journals such as positions: asia critique, Continuum, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Asian Cinema, and a number of edited volumes. She is also the author of Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (2018). She is currently writing her next monograph, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Network: Voice, Ethnicity, Power (working title) (Palgrave Macmillan, under contract).

csgchku Past Events

Dykes, Camera, Action! Film Screening and Q&A with Director Caroline Berler

Lesbians didn’t always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility, and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Rose Troche, Cheryl Dunye, Yoruba Richen, Desiree Akhavan, Vicky Du, film critic B. Ruby Rich, Jenni Olson, and others share moving and often hilarious stories from their lives and discuss how they’ve expressed queer identity through film.

For enquiries, please contact Ms. Christine Vicera at viceracn@hku.hk