Film Screening: Datong: The Great Society

The Stanford University Center for East Asian Studies presents a screening of Datong: The Great Society

Q&A with Director Evans Chan will be held immediately following the screening.

Framed around the Swedish sojourn (1904-1908) of Kang Youwei (Liu Kai Chi), who famously revived the Confucian utopia Datong (The Great Society), the film traces the struggle of Kang, his daughter Tung Pih (Lindzay Chan), and his disciple Liang Qichao (Ben Yeung) to modernize China's imperial monarchy. Renowned theatre artist Chiang Ching narrates and the virtuosic Mary Stephen edits director Evans Chan's inventive docu-drama.

Evans Chan
Director
Considered “one of the most singularly innovative and diverse figures in the Chinese cultural world [in the past 15 years],” Evans Chan, New York-based critic, playwright and filmmaker has made four narrative features and five documentaries.*

Chan's award winning films have been shown at the Berlin, Rotterdam, London, Moscow, Montreal, and Taiwan Golden Horse film festivals, among others.

Born in Guangdong, raised in Macau and Hong Kong, Chan has published three books including The Last of the Chinese, which won the Best Critical Essay Prize at the 2000 Hong Kong Literary Bi-annual, and is the editor/translator into Chinese of three books by Susan Sontag, of which “Selected Writings” and “Regarding the Pain of Others” were named the year's Best Non-Fiction Books by United Daily News. His writings in English appear in Cinemaya, Asian Cinema, Film International and Postmodern Culture. He is currently working on a book, A Concise History of Chinese Cinema(s), forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press. Chan's play, The Naked Earth, based on an Eileen Chang novel, was produced Off Broadway at New York's Bank Street Theatre in 2000.