gchallen 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

gchallen 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.

gchallen 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