This talk discusses the sound-image relations in Philip Scheffner's 2007 film 'The Halfmoon Files,' which is built around an audio recording of 80 seconds at its core. The film draws into its fold the colonial and war discourses that preserved a trace of the subjectivity of an Indian prisoner-of-war placed in the crosshairs of the world's first sound archive, colonial photography and physiognomy, and the politics of British-German relations in World War I.

Four thought-provoking and entertaining films spanning the diverse realities, histories, and cultures of Asia. Each film will be followed by a moderated discussion.

Sunday, February 6, 2011, 2:00 p.m.

Japan Unreeled: 'The Spirit of Taiko' (2005)

Featuring a musical demonstration by members of Pittsburgh Taiko

Sunday, February 13, 2011, 2:00 p.m.

China Unreeled: 'Up the Yangtze' (2008)

Sunday, February 27, 2011, 2:00 p.m.

India Unreeled: 'Smile Pinki' (2008)

Part of the Asia Over Lunch series. Xiuying Zou, Public Services Librarian, EAL, and Ho Nam Choi, Principle Researcher, Korean Institute of Science and Technology Information, will present the variety of Korean Studies resources available.

The making of the collective is the central question of two of director Chen Kaige's early films, Yellow Earth (1984) and The Big Parade (1985). Both films re-enact the problematic, sometimes violent process through which individuals are transformed into members of 'the People.' In Yellow Earth, this transformation hinges on the relationship between collecting folk songs and 'collecting' peasants - 'mobilizing and recruiting them into the ranks of the People.

Part of the Asia Over Lunch series. Lecture by Bell Yung, Professor, Department of Music.

Join us for a special colloquium where University of Pittsburgh graduate students will interrogate and challenge the definitions of 'national' and 'transnational' through an investigation of American, German, Russian, Israeli, Palestinian, Mexican, South Korean, and Japanese screen cultures.

Panelists:

Yvonne Franke, German/Film

No Home in Place: German Heimat on the Move

Olga Klimova, Slavic/Film

Beach as a Liberated Space of Teenagers: The Allegories of Optimistic Past and Pessimistic Present in Soviet Cinema of the 1970s

Contemporary corporate Hollywood is often referred to as a 'self-aware cinema of spectacle'. How are spectacles featured in action blockbusters, a genre that relies heavily upon star presence and global accessibility? How do spectacular images, paired with mythical narrative, mobilize new relations of time and space in a non-Western urban setting? This talk looks into the built-in pleasures promised by the thematic and stylistic elements in the family action genre.

Modern Japanese literary discourse often utilizes authors' traumatic experiences as meaningful not only in their lives and literary careers, but also in the trajectory of literary history. I explore one such event from the life of Uno K'ji (1891-1961) in order to question the manner wherein literary historical discourse has imagined the author for mutually irreconcilable agendas, yet into an apparently seamless narrative of modern Japanese literature.

Coffee and cookies provided

Talk by Yiju Huang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign