NEWS
Thursday, April 24, 2025
1:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Senate Room, 19/F, Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (LAU), City University of Hong Kong. 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong.
Please register for the conference here: https://forms.gle/1cQ8teyzpxLHfANKA
Please download the program notes here: https://shorturl.at/fmHP6
Asian cinema studies has rapidly expanded under the impact of globalization, compounded
by the resurgence of varied nationalisms, resistance movements, and the affordances of
digital media. Differentiated experiences of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic
have further heightened interest in local politics and cultural activism, newer media and the
digital everyday, and a renewed geopolitical divide between East and West and between
North and South. A new “companion” to Asian cinemas therefore feels necessary and urgent
in these times. This collaborative volume takes up emerging questions in the field to weave a
model for a “trans-Asian” film studies that is cognizant of the durability of the nation state as
well as alternative models of situated multiscalar ideas of place and belonging.
“New Directions in Trans-Asian Cinema and Media Studies” symposium is organized by the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong in partnership with the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Asian Film & Media Initiative (AFMI), and Asian Cinema Research Lab (ACR Lab). This symposium is a subsequent event for the publication of The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas, a massive volume of Asian cinema studies, which was edited by Zhang Zhen, Sangjoon Lee, Intan Paramaditha, and Debashree Mukherjee.
Symposium Organizers:
Sangjoon Lee (City University of Hong Kong)
Zhen Zhang (New York University)
Intan Paramaditha (Macquarie University)
Speakers:
Zhen Zhang (New York University)
Intan Paramaditha (Macquarie University)
Alicia Izharuddin (National University of Singapore)
Elizabeth Wijaya (University of Toronto)
Enoch Yee-lok Tam (Lingnan University)
Daisy Yan Du (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
Chairs and Discussants:
Richard Allen (City University of Hong Kong)
Jean Ma (University of Hong Kong)
Elmo Gonzaga (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Jerrine Tan (City University of Hong Kong)
Zoe Meng Jiang (University of Hong Kong)
Schedule
1:00-1:20 pm
Welcome Remarks
1:20-2:10 pm
Keynote Lecture:
“Trans-Asian Cinemas at Home in the World”
Zhen Zhang (New York University)
Discussant:
Jean Ma (University of Hong Kong)
2:10-3:10 pm
Panel ONE
Gender Politics and Trans-Border Connections
Chair: Jerrine Tan (City University of Hong Kong)
“Transnational Women’s Cinema in Southeast Asia: Mouly Surya’s Marlina the Murderer in
Four Acts”
Intan Paramaditha (Macquarie University)
“Revisiting the Face Veil in Post-Pandemic Times: The Humane Visual Ethics of Indonesian
Islamic Filmmaking”
Alicia Izharuddin (National University of Singapore)
Discussant:
Elmo Gonzaga (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
3:10-3:30 pm
Tea Break
3:30 – 5:00 pm
Panel TWO
Colonial, National, and Trans-Asian Imaginaries
Chair: Richard Allen (City University of Hong Kong)
“Desiring Nanyang, Nation, and Home: Fictions of Belonging in Two Rediscovered Postwar
Films from Singapore”
Elizabeth Wijaya (University of Toronto)
“Personality and Morality in Screen Performance: Hong Kong Film Criticism and Social
Reform of the 1920s”
Enoch Yee-lok Tam (Lingnan University)
“Melting the Iron Curtain: Political Immediacy, Metal-morphosis, and the Caricatured
Western Leaders in Agitprop Animation in Socialist China, 1949–65”
Daisy Yan Du (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
Discussant:
Zoe Meng Jiang (University of Hong Kong)
5:10-6:20 pm
Roundtable Discussion
Presented by:
School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts
Asian Cinema Research Lab (ACR Lab)
Asian Film & Media Initiative (AFMI)
This is an in-person event (with zoom live broadcast), open to the public. Prior registration is required at least three days before the start of the event. Non-CityUHK attendees will receive emailed instructions for building access and may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID upon arrival. CityUHK attendees must present their CityUHK ID.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at [email protected]
