Month: October 2010

Association for Asian Studies Western Conference Screening Recap

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Autumn Gem at Cal State Northridge

The 48th annual Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies was held between October 22-23 at California State University, Northridge. The theme of this year’s conference was “Translating Asia: Past, Present, & Future.”

Northridge experienced a large 6.7 magnitude earthquake back in January 17, 1994. I may be mixing up my earthquakes, but I seem to recall being home in San Diego during that time. Duck and cover is something ingrained in every California’s mind, but I remember distinctly being frozen in fear in my bed as the quake went on for just under a minute. The earthquake’s epicenter was just two miles away from CSUN’s campus, and it caused $400 million dollars in damages; the rebuilding project was finally completed in 2007. As a student at Stanford in the mid-90’s, I saw how long it took for repairs to be completed; it seemed every quarter there was another building that was closed to do earthquake repairs or retrofitting.

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South Pasadena Public Library Screening Recap

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Autumn Gem in South Pasadena

Back in February, 2010, we attended a talk by filmmaker Arthur Dong at the South Pasadena Public Library prior to our film screening at UC Irvine. Following Arthur’s showing of Hollywood Chinese, we spoke with several of the organizers, including City Librarian Steve Fjeldsted, about bringing Autumn Gem to South Pasadena. We gave him a DVD and communicated with him over the next several months, ultimately setting up the screening we held on October 21, 2010.

First of all, big shout of goes to Steve, members of the South Pasadena Chinese-American Club and the Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library, for bringing out over a hundred people! It’s always great to have large crowds come out to our screening, and it’s a bonus when they all stay to the end for the Q&A. We made some contacts as well, so there’s a good chance we’ll be coming back in 2011 for additional SoCal screenings.

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UC Santa Barbara Screening Recap

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Autumn Gem at UC Santa Barbara

Our first stop in our final SoCal tour of 2010 was at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Our screening was arranged by the East Asia Center and held at the Multicultural Center Theater. Rae and I drove down from the Bay Area; we started our drive at noon, since I had an event that I was covering at Apple. Fortunately, we encountered no traffic on the 101 and arrived at Santa Barbara in just four and a half hours.

The crowd at the MCC was mostly comprised of students and graduate students from the university. Normally, students are a bit shy to ask questions, but a couple of students were particularly inquisitive and kept asking us questions. That’s good! We love to field questions and hear what people think about the film.

The screening was co-sponsored by the East Asia Center and PIRE-ECCI (The Partnership in International Research and Education in Electron Chemistry and Catalysis at Interfaces). Thanks go out to Professor Mayfair Yang and MCC Associate Director Viviana Marsano for organizing the event.

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Women in Asia Conference Screening Recap

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Women in Asia Conference at ANU

Our final screening1 while in Australia was held at the Tenth International Women in Asia Conference at The Australian National University in the capital city of Canberra. The theme of this year’s conference was Crisis, Agency, and Change, certainly apt descriptors for the time that Qiu Jin lived at the turn of the last century. I attended a panel on Raden Kartini, Indonesia’s first feminist. Kartini lived and died around the same time as Qiu Jin. Like her Chinese counterpart, she left behind many writings (from her correspondences with European friends) in which she commented on the condition of Indonesia women. Certainly during this timeframe, there was a lot of activity in the women’s movement across the world! We had never heard about Kartini before this conference, much like non-Chinese have never heard about Qiu Jin.

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