LECTURE 1
Prof. Zhang Yingjin, Styles, Subjects, and Special Points of View: Parallels in Chinese and Euro-American Documentaries

About the Speaker
Professor Zhang Yingjin (Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego), was under LEWI Visitorship Programme in March 2004. His research project in Hong Kong investigate contemporary Chinese cinema, inclusive of documentaries and also underground and independent productions.

Professor Zhang is an expert in Chinese literature and film, comparative literature, and cultural studies. His research areas include Chinese and comparative literature, Chinese cinema (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Asian and Asian American cinema, media industry, visual culture, urban studies, transnational cultural politics and cultural history. He is the author of The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time, and Gender (Stanford University Press, 1996), co-author of Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (Routledge, 1998), and editor of Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943 (Stanford University Press, 1999).

Abstract
This study explores the origins, styles, problems, solutions, and possible future directions in Chinese independent documentary from a comparative perspective. I argue that Chinese independent (or underground) filmmaking actually started with independent documentary in the late 1980s and that the Chinese preference for the cinema verite and interview styles represents an attempt to resist the propagandist, voice-of-God approach in the official news and documentary programming. However, self-erasure and misconceived objectivity typical of the earlier works engendered problems in documentary filmmaking, and a subsequent self-repositioning in the late 1990s has reclaimed the subjective voice and readjusted the artist's attitude toward their subjects. The call for returning to the personal is further exemplified in the current euphoria for DV works, and the idea of amateur filmmaking once again highlights the connection between independent documentary and its special points of view on ordinary people's lives in a changing society.

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LECTURE 2*
Dr. Ramona Curry, The Conjunction of Gender and Race in the Image of 'The Blonde'

About the Speaker Dr. Ramona Curry (Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), is our scholar-in-residence and a visiting Fulbright scholar in 2004.

Dr. Curry's research focuses are critical theory, history of film and other forms of popular culture in the U.S. and in transnational exchange. Dr. Curry is the author of Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), and also contributed chapters for Constructing Pan-Chinese Cultures: Globalism & the Shaw Brothers Cinema (forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press, 2004) and Sex and Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media (University of Minnesota Press, 2002, co-authored with Angharad Valdivia).

Abstract
Visual media generated in the United States - whether in advertisements, films, television programming on Internet imagery - are dominated by images of “blondes”: women with yellow/very light-colored hair. Such figures - usually young and very slim, usually with long tresses they toss about their heads - not only appear much more frequently in the media than in the U.S. population, but also clearly signify youth, fun, freedom and sexuality, values which have broad global appeal. My talk will use slides and video clips to examine the history of this central representational practice in U.S. media and to begin to discuss its impact and implications in areas of the world where traditional standards of womanly beauty and, indeed, the usual appearance of the population, diverge sharply from that tall young blonde, blue-eyed feminine ideal. I will argue that the ubiquitous image of “the blonde” (but also increasingly of the blond - the male version of the figure) in Western media is heavily encoded to represent “whiteness” - an impressive spectacle of desire which at once displays and works to deny racial and sexual difference. “The blonde” has thus come to function as an important commodity that effectively supports the U.S. economy and its dominant cultural-political values both domestically and abroad.

*Approved Alternative Programme for University Forum 

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LECTURE 3*
The House of Spirit
(2000, 42 minutes) 
A Documentary Film by Zhang Weimin
Assistant Professor of Cinema & Television, HKBU

The House of Spirit
Winner of Betty Thomas Award 1999
Nominee for 2001 Ammy Award - Best Documentary Film
Official Selection of 2001 Chicago Asian American International Film Festival
Official Selection of 2001 Vancouver Asian Pacific International Film Festival

About the Director
Zhang Weimin is a graduate from Beijing Film Academy and Ohio University. She is a sixth generation filmmaker, winner of several awards including First Place Winner in the Short Film Competition, Cannes International Film Festival.

Synopsis
Shao Fang and her husband, Sheng Pao, were invited to apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright in the late 1940s. Later, in Williamstown, West Virginia, this Chinese couple from China designed and built a house entirely by themselves. As a woman, as a Chinese, and as an artist, Shao Fang, now in her eighties, has led a highly unusual life. This film is a personal documentary of this indomitable soul and her spiritual house

*Approved Alternative Programme for University Forum 

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