Asian Film Symposium draws top film scholars and producers to UH Manoa this week

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Jim Manke, 808-956-6099
UH Manoa Chancellor's Office
Jeannette Paulson Hereniko, 808-396-8353
Posted: Oct 29, 2003

An all star cast takes center stage at a two-day symposium on Asian cinema as the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival gets underway.

Film scholars and industry professionals will meet Friday and Saturday, October 31 and November 1 at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa for a presentation of papers and discussion of a wide variety of subjects under the banner:

LOCAL/GLOBAL/EXOTIC:
Transnational Production and Autoethnography

What effect does the search for global audiences have on the telling of local stories in Asian screen cultures? The symposium explores the transformation of local culture by transnational cultural circulation in the screen cultures of the Asian region.

Two free public forums are part of the symposium program.

On Friday, at the symposium keynote address, Ackbar Abbas, Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Hong Kong, will speak on "Asian Cities, Asian Cinema." This session begins at 1:30 p.m. in Burns Hall Room 2121 at the East-West Center.

The conference re-convenes on Saturday morning for panel discussions. The afternoon public event will be at the UH Manoa Orvis Auditorium and feature Filipina filmmaker Marilou Diaz Abaya. Abaya is the most important living feature film director in the Philippines. She will be interviewed on stage for the audience by Asian film scholar Chris Berry, who is also editor-in-chief of the new TransAsia Screens online journal.

The public forums are free and open to the public. A detailed schedule follows:

Friday afternoon, October 31 — Ackbar Abbas, Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Hong Kong, jumps into issues of globalism and globalization in the Asian film industry in a talk entitled "Asian Cities, Asian Cinema." East-West Center, Burns Hall, Room 2121, beginning at 1:30 p.m.

Saturday afternoon, November 1 — Marilou Diaz Abaya, the most important living feature film director in the Philippines. An on-stage discussion with film scholar Chris Berry of UC Berkeley about Diaz‘ career and how globalization has changed local storytelling in film, especially in Asia. Orvis Auditorium, UH Manoa, beginning at 2:30 p.m.

Additional details and the symposium program may be found at www.asianfilms.org. These events are co-sponsored by the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa; the Louis Vuitton Hawaii presents the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival; the Asia Pacific Media Center, Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern California.

For more information, visit: http://www.asianfilms.org