Autumn Gem Coming To University of Texas, San Antonio

Autumn Gem is featured in UTSA Today, the online newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio. We’ll be screening there on Sunday, November 13, 2010 from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

Here’s the article, copied below.

UTSA East Asia Institute to screen documentary on China’s first feminist

By Kris Rodriguez
Public Affairs Specialist

(Nov. 10, 2010)–As part of UTSA Diversity Month, the UTSA East Asia Institute will host a free screening of the documentary “Autumn Gem: The Story of China’s First Feminist” at 3:30 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 14 in the University Center Retama Auditorium (2.02.02) on the UTSA Main Campus. Directors Rae Chang and Adam Tow will attend the screening to meet the public and discuss their project.

The film is about Qui Jin, a Joan of Arc-style character, who defied tradition to become the leader of a revolutionary army fighting against the corrupt Qing dynasty. The radical women’s-rights activist challenged traditional gender roles and emerged as a national heroine celebrated in China today.
Jin envisioned a future where women would free themselves from the confines of tradition and arise as strong and active citizens of a new and modern nation. She spoke out against foot binding and other oppressive practices and demanded equal education for girls.

Chang graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in art and anthropology. Her short films have been presented at APAture Film Night in 2003 and the Women of Color Film Festival in 2004.

Tow is a digital media producer and Web consultant who graduated from Stanford University in 1997 with a degree in symbolic systems. An accomplished photographer, his work has been published in the New York Times, Stanford magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.

The UTSA East Asia Institute promotes appreciation and understanding of East Asian societies and cultures through research, outreach, networking, education, student-faculty exchange, and business development and cooperation. The institute organizes seminars, workshops, lectures, conferences, film festivals and art exhibitions as well as bringing in performing art groups from China, Japan, Korea and other Asian nations. The institute encourages faculty research collaborations within UTSA and with participating East Asian university researchers. For more information, call 210-458-4943 or e-mail eai@utsa.edu.

Simon Fraser Screening Location Change

There’s been a location change for our Simon Fraser University screening this coming Friday, November 12, 2010. The new location is at:

Room 3200 SFU Woodwards
149 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 5K3
Canada.

Enter from Cordova courtyard.

Time: 6:30-8:30pm.

Please RSVP and register online at http://cgi.sfu.ca/~hccweb/cgi-bin/OnlineRegistration/site/event/detail.php?id=165

Pacific Northwest Screening Tour Underway!

Our final tour of 2010 is underway! Rae has been in Oregon for the past four days, screening at Portland State University, Williamette University and Oregon State University to large student and community crowds. She’s heading up to Seattle to meet with me; I was in New York earlier this week for a business meeting and was unable to accompany her on the first leg of our tour.

We have a screening on Saturday at the Northwest Chinese School. Then, it’s off to Canada for three screenings at the University of Victoria, Richmond City Council and Simon Fraser University. Our SFU screening was recently mentioned in the World Journal, and it’s shaping up to be a very large screening with over 200 people in attendance.

Following our Canada trip, we fly to Houston to begin the Texas leg of our tour. It will be Rae’s first time in the Lone Star State!

Check out our screenings page for more details.

USC Screening Recap

Autumn Gem at USC

Our last screening on this Fall SoCal 2010 tour was held at the University of Southern California. I think the last time I was on campus was back in high school, when my school did a tour of West Coast colleges and universities.

Our sponsor was the USC US-China Institute, with Clayton Dube, Linda Truong, and Ada Tseng helping to organizing the screening. These three originally came from UCLA, which is the rival school to USC. That’s akin to the Stanford-Berkeley rivalry up here in the Bay Area. We joke at the beginning of our presentation how we show how Stanford and Berkeley can co-exist in matrimony. It always gets a laugh out of the crowd, especially when they can relate to it themselves.

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Bellarmine Forum at Loyola Marymount University

Autumn Gem at LMU

Our fourth and penultimate screening was held at Loyola Marymount University. Autumn Gem screened as part of the 2010 Bellarmine Forum. This year’s focus was on Women’s Art and Activism and featured a weeklong series of panels, performances, and art exhibits. Our film screened on the opening day in the Ahmanson Theater inside University Hall. When we first walked into University Hall, Rae remarked that it looked like an office building¹. Sure enough, it used to be owned by Hughes Aircraft as its corporate headquarters before being purchased and converted to university use in 2000.

Professors Gail Wronsky (English) and Susan Barber (Film and Television Studies) introduced us at our screening, which had about 35-40 students, academics and community members.

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Association for Asian Studies Western Conference Screening Recap

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

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

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

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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Deakin University Screening Recap

On Tuesdsay, we took the Metlink Tram to Burwood where one of the campuses of Deakin University is located. Deakin is a relatively new university, having only been established 25 years ago. It has campuses in several locations, including Geelong, the site of the 2010 Worlds Cycling Championship happening this week. Had we more time, it would have been fun to see some of the top racers in the world duke it out — drug-free hopefully — for the rainbow colored jerseys.

In contrast to the RMIT University screening the previous day, we had a lot more staff and outside guests come to this screening. There were several friends of my parents’ friend Bella in attendance. In addition, two of Li Jing’s compatriots from the Beijing Wushu Team were present. We have enjoyed meeting and making connections with the extended family of all those who contributed to the development of Autumn Gem!

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