Author: Adam Tow

UC Santa Cruz Screening Recap

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Rae at UC Santa Cruz

First off, apologies for the tardiness in getting this entry up. After the UC Irvine screening, I realized that I never wrote about the UC Santa Cruz showing that was held on January 25, 2010. This happened during the big winter storms here in the Bay Area. Fortunately, when we drove down to Santa Cruz, it wasn’t raining too much; it helped that we took Highway 17 when it wasn’t busy with commuter traffic. I’ve driven in that once or twice, and it’s not fun when there’s no rain, let alone a torrential downpour!

Department of History Professor, Gail Hershatter, greeted us when we arrive at the University. We had dinner with several of her graduate students before heading over to Merrill College Room 102. Due to the weather, Rae and I weren’t sure how many people would come, but we were pleasantly surprised to have over thirty students and faculty members present.

At the time of this writing, we’re getting ready to embark on our two and a half week tour to Las Vegas, Arizona, Maryland, Boston, New Jersey and New York. I’ve reread my packing strategy and packing recap posts from our October 2009 tour, and I’ve been making the necessary adjustments to get our load down to just two carry-on items for the entire trip. I’ll have a full post about this before we leave. In the meantime, here are a few photos from our UC Santa Cruz screening.

Here are photos from our screening at UC Santa Cruz.

American Association of University Women Screening Recap

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Adam and Rae with Qiu Jin's great-grandnephew!

This past Saturday, we screened Autumn Gem at the Willow Glen Branch Library in San Jose. The event was sponsored by the local chapter of the American Association of University Women, an organization dedicated to advancing “equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.” Marilyn, Linda, Mary, and the rest of the AAUW staff did an excellent job advertising the event. We filled up the Community Room to capacity with 63 people! Also in attendance was Kien-Wei, our friend who played one of the Qing soldiers in the film.

During the question and answer session, a question was asked about the whereabouts of Qiu Jin’s descendants. I mentioned that we’ve tried to locate Qiu Jin’s granddaughter, but have not yet been successful. “You just can’t enter Qiu Jin’s Granddaughter” in Google or Facebook and hope to get the address!” Imagine our surprise near the end of the Q&A when a Chinese gentleman in the front row raised his hand and stated that he was the great grandnephew of Qiu Jin! Charles then explained that he was very moved and honored watching our documentary. Suffice it to say, we were honored to have him at our screening!

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UC Irvine Screening Recap

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Autumn Gem Screening at UC Irvine

Last week, Rae and I traveled down to Southern California for a screening at UC Irvine. Professor Hu Ying, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages & Literature, was one of our three academic interview subjects in Autumn Gem. We showed the film at Connecticut College and Brown University during our October 2009 tour, so we were excited to complete our scholarly tour!

We drove down a few days before to meet up with filmmaker Arthur Dong, who screened his latest documentary Hollywood Chinese at the South Pasadena Library on Thursday. Meeting with him on Saturday at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, we discussed methods to better market the film to our core audience of educational institutions and Chinese/women’s organizations.

On Tuesday, we returned to UC Irvine for the first time since we interviewed Professor Hu Ying in May, 2008. It certainly doesn’t feel like nearly two years have passed! We attended her Gender in Chinese Poetry class and listened to three of her students presenting their interpretations of Qiu Jin’s poems. Although the English translations were different, I could immediately identify some of the ones we used in Autumn Gem. Following lunch at the University Club, Rae and I retired to the spacious Student Center to get some work done before the screening. A few hours later, we headed to the McCormick Theater in the new Humanities Center building.

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Web Site Refresh

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This week, we updated the look and feel of the Autumn Gem web site. The original site was blog-centric and was appropriate when we were in production and post-production. With the film complete, we’re switching the web site to focus on the finished product. You can learn about the film, attend one of our upcoming screenings, learn how to support the film or buy the DVD.

Don’t worry, we’ll continue to update the News section with recaps from our tour, press mentions, post-production notes and travel tips.

Let us know what you think about the new site!

Berkeley Screening Recap and Photos

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Autumn Gem at UC Berkeley

It’s been a week since our screening at Rae’s alma mater. Apologies on the delay getting this recap and photo gallery out. We had another great turnout at Berkeley last Thursday. Thanks to AAS 121 (Professor Harvey Dong’s Chinese American History class), Asian American Studies, Asian Pacific American Student Development, Cal Taiji & Cal Wushu for sponsoring and publicizing the event. By our count there were about 130 people in attendance, ranging from students to faculty and to the sister of Tien-Fang Hou, one of the sponsors of our New Jersey screening in October. The crowd didn’t give me too much of a hard time being the Stanford-half of the Autumn Gem team; I’ve never been one to be too into the whole Stanford-Cal rivalry. After all, many of my relatives attended Cal, and I grew up a bear loving fan before becoming a tree hugger.

With the Berkeley screening, we concluded our tour schedule for 2009. Autumn Gem will be back in 2010 on January 9, 2010 at 2:00 pm, at the San Francisco Public Library in Chinatown. We hope our successful 2009 season will be a springboard for a great 2010!

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Stanford University Screening Recap and Photos

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Autumn Gem at Stanford University

With over a month to prepare for our Stanford screening tonight, we made sure we got the word out about the film through as many channels as possible. The Center for East Asian Studies was the co-sponsor for the event, and they helped flyer the campus, email various mailing lists, and list the screening on Stanford’s Events web site. Stefan from the Palo Alto Independent Films Group brought a sizeable contingent from his Meetup group to the showing. Another Meetup group brought a large group of Asian professionals. This week’s article in the Palo Alto Weekly also produced a big draw tonight. By my estimations, there were over 150 people of all ages at tonight’s screening of Autumn Gem. The lower portion of Cubberley was so packed it reminded me when I was a frosh taking Humanities in the very same auditorium! Thanks to everyone who came out to see our film!

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Palo Alto Weekly Article on Autumn Gem

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Autumn Gem in the Palo Alto Weekly

The Palo Alto Weekly has an article on Autumn Gem this week. The writer, Be’eri Moalem, came to our house a few weeks ago following our screening at City College of San Francisco. Back in 2002, I interned for a month as a photographer for the Weekly, photographing dozens of stories.

Tomorrow is our big screening at Stanford University, my alma mater. On Thursday, we head over to Berkeley, from which Rae graduated. We spent part of this evening posting flyers around campus in our final advertising effort. Cubberley seats 500 people, and I’m hoping that we’ll have at least a 100 people at the screening. Come and bring your friends!

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