Join us for a free one-day workshop for educators at the Japanese American National Museum, hosted by the USC U.S.-China Institute and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This workshop will include a guided tour of the beloved exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community, slated to close permanently in January 2025. Following the tour, learn strategies for engaging students in the primary source artifacts, images, and documents found in JANM’s vast collection and discover classroom-ready resources to support teaching and learning about the Japanese American experience.
Between Disorder and Unexpected Pleasures: Tales from the New Chinese Cinema
Roy and Edna Disney/Calarts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall presents a series of Chinese film screenings.
When:
April 9, 2011 12:00am
Where
In recent years, independent Chinese cinema has experienced a virtual explosion. Digital media have allowed filmmakers to be bolder, more daring and to explore hybrid forms of documentary and fiction, or mix found and live footage while playing with novel formal strategies. Independent Chinese cinema has also come of age. Reaching beyond nostalgia and social protest, it plumbs surprising corners of Chinese reality with humor that is at times light, dark, saucy, dry, raunchy or conceptual. Expect the unexpected.
Wednesday, April 6 | 8:30 pm
ZHU WEN: THOMAS MAO (XIAO DONGXI)
Los Angeles premiere | 2010, 80 min., DigiBeta
One of the most original voices of post-socialist China, novelist/filmmaker Zhu Wen has crafted, for his third feature, a droll, surreal and ironic tale in which East meets West . . . or does it? Thomas is a painter trekking through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and Mao the scruffy “innkeeper” who lodges him. Gradually, what appears to be “reality” shifts. Who is the butterfly, who is the philosopher?
Thursday, April 7 | 8:30 pm
LI HONGQI: WINTER VACATION (HANJIA)
Los Angeles premiere | 2010, 91 min., HDCAM
Slackers in Inner Mongolia meet the poetry of the absurd. In a dreary little northern town, kids have nothing to do . . . while the adults are wily or apathetic. For his third feature, poet/filmmaker Li Hongqi effortlessly leads the viewer through a series of breathtaking tableaux in which tension accumulates and then releases in unexpected, and often wickedly funny, ways.
Friday, April 8 | 8:30 pm
LIU JIAYIN: OXHIDE II (NIUPI II)
Los Angeles premiere | 2009, 133 min., DigiBeta
In 2004, at 23, Liu Jiayin stunned the world by shooting Oxhide in CinemaScope in her parents’ 50-square-meter apartment. She is back at REDCAT with an even bolder “sequel.” More tightly constructed—nine shots that go around a kitchen/workshop/dining table in 45-degree increments, performing a complete 180-degree match—Oxhide II is also dryly humorous, intelligent and insightful, deconstructing the dynamics of a family in crisis.
Saturday, April 9 | 3:00 pm
HAO JIE: SINGLE MAN (GUANGYUN)
U.S. premiere | 2010, 95 min., HDCAM
“This is a strange and delightful thing from China: a sex comedy, bawdy and a little raunchy, about four elderly farmers . . . all non-professional actors playing fictionalized versions of themselves. New director Hao Jie, with a bit of Boccaccio and a dollop of Rabelais, reveals a side of rural China you’ve probably never seen before . . . Chinese indie cinema at its most wryly entertaining.” —Vancouver International Film Festival
Saturday, April 9 | 7:00 pm
HUANG WEIKAI: DISORDER (XIAN ZAI SHI GUO QU DE WEI LAI)
Los Angeles premiere | 2009, 58 min., DVCAM
A splendid, original experiment on how to translate urban texture on the screen. Huang Weikai collected more than 1,000 hours of footage shot by amateurs and journalists in the streets of Guangzhou. He then selected 20-odd incidents, reworked the images into quasi-surreal grainy black-and-white and montaged them to create a kaleidoscopic view of the great southern metropolis, in all her vibrant, loud and mean chaos.
Saturday, April 9 | 9:30 pm
JIA ZHANGKE: I WISH I KNEW (HAI SHANG CHUAN QI)
Los Angeles premiere | 2010, 138 min., HDCAM
China’s most significant filmmaker of the decade has done it again, with another alluring hybrid of documentary and fiction. Here Jia weaves a dense texture between amorously shot footage of contemporary Shanghai and the films the city created or inspired. Peeking through the gaps of an architecture menaced by permanent urban renewal, he finds the traces of a romantic or brutal past, and echoes the voices of survivors or those who went into exile.
Curated by Cheng-Sim Lim and Bérénice Reynaud.
Program presented in collaboration with Museum of the Moving Image (NY), Pomona College Art Museum, UCLA Film & Television Archive, Los Angeles Filmforum and Echo Park Film Center.
Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels.
Cost:
General admission $9, Students $7 with ID, Calarts students, faculty, and staff $5
Event Website URL:
Phone Number:
213-237-2800
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October 20, 2024
October 20, 2024
Please join us for the Grad Mixer! Hosted by USC Annenberg Office of International Affairs, Enjoy food, drink and conversation with fellow students across USC Annenberg. Graduate students from any field are welcome to join, so it is a great opportunity to meet fellow students with IR/foreign policy-related research topics and interests.
RSVP link: https://forms.gle/1zer188RE9dCS6Ho6
Events
Wednesday, November 20, 2024 - 3:00pm
Hosted by USC Annenberg Office of International Affairs, enjoy food, drink and conversation with fellow international students.
Thursday, November 7, 2024 - 4:00pm
Join us for an in-person conversation on Thursday, November 7th at 4pm with author David M. Lampton as he discusses his new book, Living U.S.-China Relations: From Cold War to Cold War. The book examines the history of U.S.-China relations across eight U.S. presidential administrations.