We’re happy to announce that Autumn Gem DVDs are now available for purchase! For personal, non-commercial use, the price is $20. For educational institutions and organizations that wish to show Autumn Gem to classes and clubs, the price is $120. Shipping and handling is an additional $5.
Our final stop in our seven screenings in six days week was at the New Jersey Chinese Community Center. Thanks to Tien-Fang Hou for bringing a great crowd to the screening. Coincidentally, Tien-Fang’s grandson trains at the same wushu school as Melissa, the girl who played the young Qiu Jin in our film. Small world! All in all, we had about 75 people at the event, which was well organized by my Uncle Don.
Screening venues have varied on this tour; we’ve shown the films in theaters, classrooms, and auditoriums. Whenever possible, we have tried to stagger the chairs in the latter two to reduce the amount of heads moving laterally back and forth to read the subtitles. Often times, the people in front are blocking the view of the captions in the film. I really liked how Slumdog Millionaire moved the subtitles away from the traditional spot in the bottom third of the screen. Though I don’t know if it would be effective in our film, given the amount of text being displayed on-screen, but it’s something I certainly keep wondering about. With films, there’s always that “one last change” that you’d like to make. Eventually, however, you have to put your foot down and say, “No more changes!”
We’ll have four screenings coming up this week. Connecticut College, Brown, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. Though it’s a far cry from the seven in six days, we’ll be traveling a much greater distance. We’re renting a car tomorrow morning to head up from New Jersey to Connecticut. Almost a year and a half ago, we went to interview Professors Amy Dooling and Lingzhen Wang for the film. Now, in just a few days, we’ll be screening at their respective colleges!
Here are photos from the Saturday night screening at the New Jersey Chinese Community Center.
When I was in high school, one of my top college choices was Princeton University. Unfortunately at the time, I wasn’t accepted, and I eventually went to Stanford. Things worked out in the end, and I no longer spend any time wondering what might have been.
Our screening was organized by the Davis International Center and sponsored by Forbes College, the Women’s Center, and the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. Thanks to Paula Chow, Jingwen and Margaret for organizing the evening’s events. Though we were competing with Parent’s Weekend, the ALCS, and the wet weather, we had 25 people in attendance.
Over the past week, we’ve gotten requests to add more stops on this current tour. While we can’t accommodate all of them, we might be adding a couple more stops during the final week. Once we’ve secured all the details, we’ll update the blog and screenings page. Rae is already starting to plan our next U.S. tour in Spring of 2010.
A pleasant surprise was seeing Hilary and Stephen at the screening. Rae and I photographed their wedding back in 2005. It was great to see them again and to see our wedding photographs adorning their apartment. Because of Autumn Gem, we haven’t shot many weddings over the past two years. If I were to shoot a wedding today, however, I would use video to complement the still photos I take during the day. With cameras like the 5D Mark II, Nikon D3S and other HD-video capable cameras, the lines between wedding photography and videography are blurring.
Our double feature on Thursday, October 15, ended with a screening at the University of Maryland, College Park. The weather was really wet, and we were fearing the worst in regards to the turnout. But, by golly, thirty-five people said, “Hell no!” to the rain and wind and made it to the showing! Thanks go out to John Young, Rebecca McGinnis from the Confucius Institute, the Center for East Asian Studies and the Women’s Studies Departments for organizing the event.
We had a good mix of UM students, faculty, relatives (Tow clan was well represented), and outside people who heard about the film through various means (email, organizations, flyers and word-of-mouth).
Rae and I are creating a list of what works and what doesn’t with regards to getting more people from the outside community to attend the screenings. Extra-credit and course requirements don’t exactly work in this case! Scheduling screenings between noon and 5:00 pm works for students but isn’t so great for those that work outside the schools. We have a nighttime showing of Autumn Gem coming up in New Jersey tomorrow; we’ll see how good the turnout is for that.
Following the screening, we went to Wong Gee Restaurant in Wheaton to have dinner with our cousin, his family, and relatives. I’ll have more to write now, but we’re just about to start a screening at Princeton! Here are photos from UM yesterday.
Following our screening at George Mason University, we drove into our Nation’s Capitol, where we had scheduled a dinner with Rae’s college friend Alisa and my high school friend and newly-elected Congressman, Jared Polis. Traffic in the area wasn’t as bad as I had feared, though the wet weather made for some extra careful driving. In total for the day, we drove less than 100 miles; that’s less than a typical trip to San Francisco and back for us in the Bay Area! Still, I think I’d prefer to take public transportation as much as possible; the city and outlying suburbs reminded me a lot of Paris, France.
Our third stop in three days (three of seven for the week) took us to George Mason University. We had the pleasure of being toured around the campus by Dr. Karl Zhang, Professor of Chinese Modern and Classical Languages at GMU. It turns out that Professor Zhang did his Ph.D. work at Stanford University the same time that I was an undergraduate. Alas, our paths never crossed, as he was a fuzzy in Lit and I was a techie in Symbolic Systems.
Professor Dan Liu arranged for her Chinese Literature class of about 60 people to watch Autumn Gem at the Student Union II on campus. So, add a third way for us to get students to watch our documentary: food, extra credit, or make it a requirement! Among the other guests at the screening was Ken Lee. His grandmother and grandaunt were heavily involved in the revolutionary movement around the time of Qiu Jin. There is a well-known story of the two where they hid weapons and other contraband in a wedding sedan chair while traveling through China.
Again, one of the more frequent questions we’ve received throughout these screenings is what happened to her family after her death. Strangely, in her entire work of several hundred poems, essays and writings, there’s no mention of her family.
It’s early morning right now on Thursday, October 15. We’re off to Oldfields School in Glencoe, MD, for a talk at the boarding school. Then, we travel back south to the University of Maryland, College Park. Tomorrow, we’ll be taking the train over to New Jersey, where we’ll be screening at Princeton. The memories of college applications and my own high school experience are coming back to me. But, that’s a story for tomorrow!
Until then, here are some photos from our showing at George Mason University!
We’ve discovered the secret to getting a good turnout at our university screenings: food and extra credit! About 90 students attended the screening at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Big kudos to Constantine Vaporis, Anna Shields, Rebecca Boehling and all the UMBC professors who got their students to come to the showing. They also did a fantastic job flyer-ing the campus with our Autumn Gem posters.
We got a number of insightful comments and questions from the students. One of them asked how Qiu Jin could be considered a feminist when she was shown to be rejecting her female identity at the same time she fought for women’s rights. Another student wanted to know whether or not Qiu Jin was trying to emulate the male heroic figure or create a modern female heroic figure. There’s no right or wrong answers to these questions. They point to the conflict within Qiu Jin and touch upon why she’s still such a fascinating person to study today.
Professor Boehling made the comment that the actresses playing Qiu Jin both wore makeup during the recreation scenes, even those where Qiu Jin is shown to be wearing Western clothing. She asked whether it was a deliberate decision on our part to do this. The answer is no, we honestly didn’t think too much about makeup during the filming of the documentary. We certainly could have had a stylist on-set to help make the makeup look more natural and less feminine. There were some instances where I used Apple’s Color program to desaturate the colors on the young Qiu Jin’s face, but in general, I generally left things as they were shot.
Following the screening, we went out to dinner at Catonsville Gourmet with Julie, a high school classmate of mine, and Professor Vaporis. Like I said in my earlier posts, we’re really enjoying this trip as we’re able to reconnect with friends and family whom we haven’t seen in many moons. After the next screening at George Mason University, we’ll be heading over to our nation’s capitol to meet up with more friends from high school and college!
One of the first questions that I had when we arrived in Champaign, Illinois, was, “Is it Urbana-Champaign or Champaign-Urbana?” The University is called University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), but I saw buses with signs saying Champaign-Urbana. The reason for the hyphenated name is because the school is located between the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. I believe I first head about UIUC through its association with Mosaic, the first graphical web browser.
Today’s screening of Autumn Gem was held at the Asian American Cultural Center and was sponsored by the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies. There were about 30 people at the showing. With so many scholars and professors in the room, the questions and answers were again numerous and spirited. Rae and I have gotten a lot of great comments and suggestions for the film. Some of the notable questions included the following:
The song played during the ending credits is a famous song called Man Jiang Hong. The song is often (perhaps incorrectly, according to Wikipedia) attributed to the Chinese national hero Yue Fei, who was one of Qiu Jin’s heroes. Because we do not display the lyrics during the credits, however, there was confusion as to why we chose a song so strongly associated with Yue Fei to conclude the movie. It turns out that Qiu Jin wrote an alternate set of lyrics for Man Jiang Hong; Rae’s parents’ choir performed this version of the song for the film. Perhaps we will add these lyrics to a future screening version of Autumn Gem.
Some people thought that the film portrayed Qiu Jin as the first person who openly criticized the practice of foot binding. This is, of course, not true; over the long history of foot binding, there were many people who argued against the practice. Even after Qiu Jin’s death, many women continued to have their feet bound. As scholar Hu Ying states in the film, “Qiu Jin was not an original political thinker, she was more of a person on a mission.” We chose to focus on her efforts in Autumn Gem; we’ll probably add a slide to our introductory presentation about this.
Tomorrow morning, we fly out to Baltimore for a screening at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Until then, here are some photos from the screening at Urbana-Champaign!
Following our screening at Columbia College, we spent a few days in Chicago with my cousin, Steve. Rae and I got caught up on work while preparing for the next slate of screenings; seven showings of Autumn Gem in the next six days! Tonight’s screening will be at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Tomorrow morning, we’re flying to Baltimore, Maryland for a screening at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
On Saturday, we had lunch over at The Bagel. The Mish-Mash Soup was really good and the Reuben sandwich that Jeff and I both ordered was huge! Usually, I can finish my meals, but I had to save half of the sandwich for the bus ride to Champaign on Sunday!
This morning, we departed Madison, Wisconsin, in the seat of a Coach USA bus. Our destination was Chicago, Illinois, and Columbia College Chicago. Switching buses at Janesville, Rae and I slept most of the way to Chicago. When we arrived at Union Station, it was raining outside; good thing that we came prepared with our waterproof jackets and rain-resistant luggage. We took a taxi to Columbia College Chicago building at 1104 S. Wabash Avenue, which houses portions of the Film and Video Department as well as Film Row Cinema where Autumn Gem was later screened. There were many creative types milling around the dining commons, where they were holding a Meet and Greet. Student filmmakers pitched their ideas to their fellow classmates, hoping to snag a few to work on their semester film projects as art directors, cinematographers, casting directors, gaffers, and editors. We certainly could have used some help in those departments; during the production of Autumn Gem, we often felt stretched thin performing all of these tasks between the two of us.
We’ve had some great screening locales, and Film Row Cinema was no exception. Though we had another intimate screening, we had another spirited discussion afterwards. One of the audience members asked why we focused so much on scholars views of Qiu Jin instead of Chinese feminists views on her. While in Hangzhou by the Qiu Jin Monument, we did record some man-on-the-street interviews about people’s perception of Qiu Jin. In the end, however, we felt that those interviews did not fit well within the overall narrative of the film. In addition, adding them in would have extended the running time to over an hour, which we did not want to do. In the final cut, Autumn Gem is aimed at introducing the story of Qiu Jin to someone who has little or no knowledge of her. Perhaps in the future, we’ll include some clips from our Hangzhou interviews on this web site.
Following the screening, we met up with our friends, Ivan, Margaret, Steve, Jeff and Rina. We had authentic Chicago-style pizza for dinner at Lou’s. We’ll be staying in Chicago for a few days before heading out to Champaign-Urbana on Monday.
Autumn Gem 