Upcoming Public Events Presented or Co-sponsored by the USF Center for the Pacific Rim

Unless otherwise stated, all events are free and open to the public. RSVP recommended for all events; if they are required, notice is made in the individual event notice. If reservations are not required, no seat guarantee is implied by your RSVP.

To receive email and/or postal mail notification of our upcoming events, sign up here. To RSVP call (415) 422-6828. For for more information call (415) 422-6357.

The USF Center for the Pacific Rim and Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies Mini-Festival at the



INDEPENDENCIA
(Philippines, 2009, 77 mins); In Tagalog with English subtitles
Director: Raya Martin

The second of a planned trilogy on the history of the Philippines, Independencia takes place during the American occupation of the early 20th century, the film's plot is stripped to an essential framework (a man, a woman and a child hide from American patrols in the jungle rains), the better to address more weighty, complex ideas on culture, history, colonialism and cinema itself. To recreate the classic Hollywood look, Martin constructed an elaborate "jungle" set indoors, using backdrops intricatedly hand-painted by local artists... [Learn More or Buy Tickets]

Friday, 12 March | 7:00PM | PFA / Berkeley
Sunday, 14 March | 4:30PM | Kabuki

A VILLAGE CALLED VERSAILLES
(USA | 2009 | 68 mins); In English
Director: S. Leo Chiang

Largely ignored when Hurricane Katrina temporarily brought attention to America's racial and class divides was the city's Vietnamese community. After tracing the history of the Vietnamese in New Orleans, Village focuses on Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, which took on an even greater importance for this community in the post-Katrina landscape. Forced once again into the role of refugee, the people of Versailles used the church as a base for the massive reconstruction - and considerable struggle with local and federal authorities - that lay ahead... [Learn More or Buy Tickets]

Saturday, March 13 | 2:15PM | Kabuki
Tuesday, March 16 | 9:00PM | VIZ
Saturday, March 20 | 5:30PM | Camera / San Jose

NINOY AQUINO & THE RISE OF PEOPLE POWER
(USA | 2009 | 57 mins); In English
Producer/Writer/Cinematographer: Tom Coffman

Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino fought an unending battle for political reform in the name of the country and people he so fiercely loved. His critiques of President Ferdinand Marcos made him a political prisoner for seven years, and an exile in the United states for five. Ninoy insisted on returning home despite knowing an attempt on his life would be all but certain. With striking archival footage and revealing interviews, Ninoy offers a compelling portrait of a political martyr and revolutionary leader. His legacy is the "indomitable spirit" and the enduring belief that our "readiness to suffer will light the torch of freedom which can never be put out..." [Learn More or Buy Tickets]

Saturday, March 13 | 4:30PM | Kabuki (North American Premiere)
Wednesday, March 17 | 7:00PM | VIZ

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH (NANJING! NANJING!)
(China | 2009 | 133 mins); In Chinese, English, and Japanese with English subtitles
Director: LU Chuan

The Nanking Massacre stirs great emotions and controversy to this day. Acclaimed Chinese director LU Chuan spent four years developing a stunning epic on the tragedy. Beginning with the city?s invasion and occupation by the Japanese Army, the film follows the conflict through a series of Chinese, Japanese, and European characters (many based on real-life individuals). Shooting in arresting black and white images, Lu is less concerned with showing unspeakable violence than in capturing the chaos and confusion of war, and how that madness ultimately brings out the best and worst of humanity... [Learn More or Buy Tickets]

Wednesday, March 17 | 9:10PM | Kabuki
Friday, March 19 | 9:10PM | PFA / Berkeley

VENUES: Kabuki: Post @ Fillmore, SF; VIZ: Post @ Webster, SF; PFA: Bancroft @Bowditch, Berkeley; Camera, 201 S. 2nd, San Jose
FOR TICKETS or more information, visit http://festival.asianamericanmedia.org/2010/

Wednesday, 10 March, 2010; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Imagining Atrocity: Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death and the Nanjing Massacre on Film
An illustrated talk by Michael Berry, Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies

On December 13, 1937 the Japanese army entered the Chinese capital of Nanjing, beginning a six week slaughter where an estimated 300,000 Chinese citizens were killed. The incident was largely marginalized in the west (until the 1997 publication of Iris Chang's bestselling The Rape of Nanking) and consistently underplayed in China for political reasons. In China, it was not until the mid-eighties, when the Nanjing Massacre suddenly began to reenter Chinese public discourse and popular consciousness (via a changing PRC political agenda), that a handful of celluloid depictions of the Rape of Nanjing began to grace theaters and classrooms in China. This talk will trace the evolution of the Nanjing Massacre through popular culture, with special attention to cinema and television. From Luo Guanqun's 1987 film Massacre in Nanjing (Tucheng xuezheng) to Lu Chuan's landmark 2009 film City of Life and Death, (Nanjing! Nanjing!) , Professor Berry will explore the intermingling of history, politics and the cinematic imagination of the Nanjing Massacre in contemporary China.

Michael Berry is associate professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia, 2005; Rye Field, 2007; Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia, 2008, Rye Field,. 2010) and Jia Zhangke's The Hometown Trilogy (British Film Institute & Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; Guangxi Normal University Press, 2010). He is also the translator of several novels, including The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (with Susan Chan Egan) (Columbia, 2008), To Live (Anchor, 2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (Columbia, 2002, Anchor, 2004, Faber & Faber, 2004), and Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up (Columbia, 2000).

Chiho Sawada, Ph.D., Director of the Japan Policy Research Institute at the Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828. City of Life and Death will screen on Wednesday, March 17 at 9:10pm at the Kabuki Sundance Theaters in San Francisco, and on Friday, March 19 at 9:10pm at the PFA in Berkeley. To purchase tickets visit the Film Festival site.

Cosponsored by the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, the Japan Policy Research Institute at the Center for the Pacific Rim, the USF Chinese Students and Scholars Association, and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Monday, 8 March, 2010; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Shanghai
An illustrated talk by Michael Knight, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Chinese Art at the Asian Art Museum

With 70 million visitors expected this spring at World Expo Shanghai, Dr Knight will give you a less-crowded, up-close view of the tumultuous history of one of Asia's most dynamic cities through 130 art works including oil paintings, Deco furniture, revolutionary posters, high fashion, & motion pictures. He will take you back to the mid 19th century when the city was a modest port, then transport you to China's Pacific Rim megalopolis of the 21st century.

Patrick Hatcher, Ph.D., Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

PERMISSION TO USE THE IMAGE above and on the card that has been distributed has been graciously arranged by the Asian Art Museum:
Moonlight over Huangpu River, 1930s
By Yuan Xiutang (dates unknown)
Poster, chromolithograph
H.53.4 x W. 77.2 cm
Collection of the Shanghai History Museum

Cosponsored by the Asia Society Northern California, the Chinese Historical Society of America, and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Tuesday, 23 February, 2010; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus (NOTE THIS CHANGE OF VENUE)
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

An Evening with Authors Peter Hessler and Leslie Chang

Peter Hessler won the Kiriyama Prize for River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, a memoir the Wall Street Journal called "a classic tale of the American abroad." the Wall Street Journal welcomed his next book Oracle Bones: A Journey between China's Past and Present with even greater praise: "everyone in the Western world should read this book.? Now we have his newest Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory. Besides books his articles appear in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, and National Geographic .

Leslie Chang 's Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China met a chorus of praise. The Financial Times called it "elegant", the Chicago Tribune, "excellent", the Boston Globe, "fascinating". China has 130 million migrant workers, the largest migration in humans history. Chang tells her story through two women workers in a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital! She is now married to Peter Hessler and calls Colorado, not China, her current home.

Patrick Hatcher, Ph.D., Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim, will interview the authors; book signing will follow.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by the Asia Society Northern California, the World Affairs Council of Northern California, the Chinese Historical Society of America, China Dialogue, and the USF School of Business and Professional Studies.



Thursday, 18 February, 2010; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

The USF Center for the Pacific Rim in conjunction with the USF Department of Economics presents
The 2010 Y.L. Wu Lecture
China's Environmental Challenge
Delivered by Elizabeth C. Economy, Ph.D., C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

China's economic growth has come at a steep price. Levels of air and water pollution as well as land degradation are among the highest in the world. China is among the leading contributors to global climate change, pollution of the Pacific, and the illegal timber trade. What are China's leaders doing to address the environmental consequences of development? Can they protect its environment and sustain economic growth?

The program will be co-hosted by Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Ph.D., Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim, and Hartmut Fischer, Ph.D., Professor of Economics at USF.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by the Asia Society Northern California, the World Affairs Council of Northern California, the Chinese Historical Society of America, China Dialogue, and the USF School of Business and Professional Studies.

This annual lecture honors the memory of Y.L. Wu, USF Professor of Economics, 1960-1988.



Wednesday, 17 February, 2010; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Pacific Ascendency and American Power
A discussion with Bruce Cumings, Ph.D., University of Chicago

Professor Cumings first book, The Origins of the Korean War, won the John King Fairbank Award. He edited the Cambridge History of Korea (forthcoming) and is a frequent contributor to The London Review of Books, the Nation, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Le Monde Diplomatique. Cumings is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and consulted on the six-hour PBS film, "Korea: The Unknown War". At Chicago he is the Gustavus F. & Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and won the Kim Dae Jung Prize for Scholarly Contributions to Democracy. He has just published Dominion from Sea to Sea (Yale University Press.)

Patrick L. Hatcher, Ph.D. Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at USF, the Korean Center, Inc., and the Asia Society Northern California.



Tuesday, 1 December, 2009; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Emerald Cities: The Arts of Siam and Burma
Featuring Bob Oaks, Ph.D., of the Society for Asian Art.

The Emerald City of this story and the Wizards of Oz are the restorers from the Asian Art Museum.

Decades ago Doris Duke swept through Southeast Asia on one of her several honeymoons buying everything in sight. Now her Foundation has given much of it to the Asian Art Museum, whose workers have performed miracles bringing back the magic of this art, seen here for the first time. The Foundation has also given the City several whole buildings from her collection, to be erected in Golden Gate Park.

Patrick L. Hatcher, Ph.D. Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at USF and the Asia Society Northern California.



Tuesday, 10 November, 2009; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Healing With Out Harm: Traditional Chinese Medicine and Endangered Species in Asia

For over 3000 years, traditional Chinese medicine has brought health and healing to millions of people throughout Asia. Today, TCM is enjoying a surge of popularity in the US also as people seek answers to health questions that elude western practitioners. While the increasing worldwide respect for and use of TCM is laudable, there is also a tragic consequence: the decimation of a wide ranging and growing number of animal species whose parts are used in traditional medicine. In fact, seven of the world's eight species of bear have seen their numbers reduced as a result of the demand for their body parts. Yet for the highly endangered Asiatic Black Bear, whose story is perhaps the most tragic, there is a ray of hope in the form of a unique partnership between the Chinese Government and Animals Asia Foundation, a Hong Kong based charity.

Please Join Jill Robinson and Lixin Huang for a fascinating look at the use of endangered species products in traditional medicine. Robinson and Huang have formed a unique partnership aimed at providing TCM practitioners and users world-wide with information regarding alternatives to endangered species ingredients in traditional medicine.

Jill Robinson, founder of the Animals Asia Foundation, was awarded the MBE (Order of the British Empire Award) by the Queen of England for her work on behalf of animals throughout Asia. She has been profiled by CNN, National Geographic, Animal Planet and the BBC for her ground-breaking programs in conservation and animal welfare.

Lixin Huang, President of American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM) and President of Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (CCAOM) in US, is active at the national and international level to promote healthy people and a healthy planet by protecting endangered species. Her work is highly respected and recognized by the Chinese community, TCM education and professional community and by the conservation community in both US and China.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Co-presented by USF Center for the Pacific Rim and cosponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America, Endangered Species International, Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford (FACES), the Institute for Holistic Health Studies at San Francisco State University and Volunteers in Asia.



Thursday, 5 November, 2009; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Beyond the Arctic

Have you dreamed of an Arctic journey to the North Pole? The documentary Beyond the Arctic follows three Taiwanese adventurers (a CEO of an online games company, a marathon runner, and a college student) who take on the Polar Challenge. This incredible race requires contestants to trek 600 kilometers on foot over 21 days from base camp to the Magnetic North Pole. After a crash course on essential survival skills - glacier skiing, navigation, treating dehydration and frost bite, warding off hungry polar bears - the trio set off.

Join director Li-Chou Yang and producer Michelle Chu for an exclusive film preview (a substantial excerpt) followed by a Q&A session.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Presented by the Japan Policy Research Institute at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco, and the San Francisco Film Society. Cosponsored by the Asia Society Northern California, the Chinese Historical Society of America, the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning, and the USF Environmental Science/Management Program.



Wednesday, 4 November, 2009; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Still Lives: Unseen China and the Films of Jia Zhangke

Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke (Still Life, 24 City, Unknown Pleasures) is perhaps the most significant artist working in China today. His meditative and exquisitely crafted films, both documentary and fiction, probe and expose the complexities and contradictions which define China's historical moment: migration, globalization, labor, modernization. Jia is the leader of China's 'Sixth Generation' of filmmakers, and chief chronicler of its dispossessed. His films, like no other, capture those enormous forces, both economic and social, which are transforming China today.

In this session, Chi-hui Yang, Director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, will discuss and show clips from Jia's films, and illustrate how his works reveal the invisible side of China's modernization?the individuals left out of the economic miracle, living out their lives on the outskirts of China?s polished urban centers and vibrant consumer economy.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.



Friday, October 23, 2009; 6:30 PM AND Thursday, October 29; 6:30 PM
Pacific Film Archive Theater
2575 Bancroft Way
Between College and Telegraph, BERKELEY

24 City

From China's eminent filmmaker Jia Zhangke, an exquisite documentary/fiction hybrid examining a Chinese factory-city being dismantled to make way for luxury apartment houses. Its workers, many of whom have spent their entire lives within the confines of the factory's shops, schools, and dormitories, narrate how its walls have come to embody China's modern history. For Jia, "history is always a blend of fact and imagination." Fictionalized monologues, based on workers' experiences but delivered by actors such as Joan Chen and Zhao Tao, are interwoven with real-life testimonies charting the factory's activities from the Korean War to the present day: stories of political engagement, love, regret, and regeneration. What emerges is an elegy to a bygone city whose physical structures may be erased by the march of capitalist development, but whose memories live on. (Synopsis by Chi-hui Yang. 112 minutes: China, 2008)

Ticket Prices:
$5.50 BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students
$9.50 Adults (18-64)
$6.50 UC Berkeley faculty and staff, Non-UC Berkeley students, Senior citizens (65 & over), Disabled persons, Youth (17 & under).

Presented by the Pacific Film Archive. Cosponsored by USF Center for the Pacific Rim.



Wednesday, 21October, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall
(Enter on Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton, San Francisco)

Meet the Author: Jake Adelstein, Tokyo Vice

At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime....crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour work weeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan that few Japanese even see, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan's most infamous yakuza boss-and the threat of death for him and his family-Adelstein decided to step down?for a time. Then, he fought back.

In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein tells a riveting, often humorous tale of his journey from an inexperienced cub reporter-who made rookie mistakes like getting in a martial-arts battle with a senior editor-to a daring, investigative journalist with a price on his head.

Jake Adelstein was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun, Japan's largest newspaper, from 1993 to 2005. From 2006 to 2007 he was the chief investigator for a U.S. State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. Considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan, he now works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the US. He is also public relations director for Polaris Project Japan, which combats human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade.

Dana Lewis (moderator) has served as president of the Japan Society of Northern California since 2007. Previously, she spent three tours of duty in Tokyo as a journalist with Kyodo News Service, Newsweek magazine, and Newsweek Japan magazine.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Co-sponsored by the USF Center for the Pacific Rim and Japan Society of Northern California.



Tuesday, 6 October, 2009; 5:45 PM
Fromm Hall, USF Main Campus
(Enter off Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton)

Salome
A presentation with excerpts, featuring Dr. Clifford Cranna, Director of Music Administration at the San Francisco Opera, and Dr. Patrick Hatcher Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the
USF Center for the Pacific Rim

When the German composer Richard Strauss selected the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde's drama Salome for treatment, audiences got a Biblical girl reborn as a Freudian sex kitten. Why? Professor Edward Said of Columbia University offered an explanation in his magisterial work Orientalism in which he shows the West characterizing the East as exotic and erotic, dominated by crafty, cunning, cruel barbarians.

For Said this western 'vision' triumphed in Europe's Age of Empires and runs through both high and popular culture. Take three celebrated images: French music has an oversexed Delilah luxuriously lounging about a desert oasis near Gaza with scissors, scheming to give Samson the haircut of a lifetime; Russian music features a cunning Bagdhad storyteller, Scheherazade, outwitting an evil Caliph; and Italian music tells of a cruel Chinese princess, Turandot, who beheads suitors who cannot answer her impossible riddles.

Opera singers sing these stereotypes, ballet dancers dance them, symphony orchestras play them. But no one out-exaggerates Hollywood. From Rudolf Valentino in The Sheik to John Wayne as Genghis Khan to Walt Disney's Aladdin, this mis-characterization infected the popular imagination. Hollywood's 'love goddess', Rita Hayworth, herself once married to an 'oriental prince', dropped most of the seven veils in her movie, Salome.

Dr. Hatcher will introduce Said's orientalist argument and Dr. Cranna will discuss the opera Salome which San Francisco Opera is presenting this fall. How will swinging San Francisco handle seven veils?

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by the USF Department of Performing Arts and Social Justice.



Tuesday, 1 September, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall
(Enter on Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton, San Francisco)

Lords of the Samurai

San Francisco?s Asian Art Museum is now hosting a major samurai exhibit. More than professional soldiers, samurai of the highest rank were visionaries, writers, and artists. The exhibits come from the Hosokawa family, a clan with a 600-year lineage of brilliant warriors and artistic masters.

Join Yoko Woodson, Curator of Japanese Art at the Asian Art Museum, in discussion with Patrick L. Hatcher, Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, for a discussion of the samurai lords and the art they sponsored and created.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by The Japan Society of Northern California and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at USF.



Wednesday, 6 May, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall
(Enter on Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton, San Francisco)

Massive Monetary Meltdowns: Forging Answers for Failed Institutions
An interview with Barry Eichengreen, Ph.D., John L, Simpson Professor of Economics and Political Science at UC Berkeley
(NOTE: The Massimo Franco event on Reagan and Pope John Paul II planned for this date has been replaced by this event.)

Professor Barry Eichengreen, a renowned political economist, is a prolific author having published fifteen books and coauthored nine others. He knows all there is to know about Other People's Money, the title of one co-authored work. His magisterial study, Globalizing Capital (2008), received rave reviews. Paul Volker, Formerly Chair of the Federal Reserve, wrote that the "book is a much needed and masterful survey of 150 years of international monetary history."

Questions for Eichengreen's visit here: Will the current global financial collapse match the destruction caused by the Great Depression of the 1930s? Will the safety nets created in western countries and Japan survive these bank & real estate failures or collapse under pressure? Will the two G2 superpowers, China and the United States, be able to contain the damage? Will international trade recover by late 2010? Will President Obama's first 100 days match those of FDR's. When it is all over, will the US economy resemble a European Social Democracy? Come here the educated possibilities.

Patrick L. Hatcher, Ph.D. Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by The USF Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought, the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning, and the Mechanics’ Institute.

Friday, 1 May 2009; 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM
PG&E Auditorium
77 Beale Street (between Market & Mission), San Francisco

Scaling Up : From Green Buildings to Green Cities in the US and China

For more information, visit the Asia Society website.

This one-day conference is the first to bring together leading green design specialists from the fields of research, technology, architecture, business, and policy from the US and China to build dialogue and collaboration. How are Bay Area and Chinese firms and individuals working together to create a green cities? How can we improve and scale up collaboration?

Presented by The Asia Society Northern California, Bay Area Council; cosponsored by the USF Center for the Pacific Rim.

Thursday, 30 April, 2009; 5:30 to 6:30 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall (Berman Room)
(Enter on Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton, San Francisco)

Remaking the News Conference: “The News Environment in China and Hong Kong and the Role of Independent Media”
A presentation by Lam Oi Wan and Iam-chong Ip

Lam Oi Wan is an educator, editor and media activist in the field of new media. She teaches "Cyberpolitics" in the Chinese University of Hong Kong and works as Northeast Asia editor and coordinator for globalvoicesonline.org and global voices advocacy project (regarding internet censorship). She is a founding member and the present Chairperson of Hong Kong In-Media, an organization promoting independent media and free speech in Hong Kong, which also funds and supports inmediahk.net, a Chinese citizens’ media website, and interlocals.net, a cross border independent media platform (to be redesigned and relaunched in April 2009). Her professional journalism experience has included the coverage of the political news during the transition of Hong Kong from U.K to China from 1994-1997. She joined the Asian NGO (Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives) and coordinated the organization's alternative education program from 1997-2000, and later worked as managing editor for Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal in Taiwan (2000-2002) before her M.Phil. study at Tsinghua University in Beijing (2002-2005).

Iam-chong Ip teaches in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is one of the founders of the Hong Kong In-media (http://www.inmediahk.net). He is currently working on editing the Chinese Independent Media Report which covers the Chinese independent media development in mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

This event is presented by the Davies Forum and co-sponsored by the Center for the Pacifice Rim and the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall
(Enter on Parker between Golden Gate & Fulton, San Francisco)

China’s Combustion Conundrum: Economics and Energy vs Environment
A presentation by Mark Levine, Ph.D.; Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, China Energy Group and Co-founder, Beijing Energy Efficiency Center

Mark Levine earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at UC Berkeley. Before joining the Berkeley Lab, he was a Fulbright scholar in Germany, then a staff scientist at the Ford Foundation Project in Washington, D.C., followed by a stint as a senior energy policy analyst at SRI in Menlo Park. In recent years he has focused his research on China, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. His talk will cover three inter-related topics: the historical view of energy development in China, misconceptions about energy and environment in China, and issues relating to climate change negotiations between the United States and China.

Patrick L. Hatcher, Ph.D. Kiriyam,a Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Reservations recommended; call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by The Chinese Historical Society of America, the World Affairs Council of Northern California, USF’s Environrmental Science and Management Program, USF’s Environmental Studies Program, the Mechanics’ Institute, and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Friday, March 13, 2009, 9:30 AM to 5:45 PM
Saturday, March 14, 2009, 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM
USF Main Campus, McLaren Complex, Room 250
(Golden Gate between Masonic & Parker in San Francisco)

Religion and Globalization in Asia: Prospects, Patterns, and Problems for the 21st Century

Few scholars or policy makers twenty years ago could have imagined that the first decades of the 21st century would be a time of explosive and wide-spread religiosity. As modernity progressed and societies became more secular and democratic, religion was supposed to loosen its hold on the ways men and women envisioned their place in the world. On the contrary, the dynamics of globalization?such as communication technologies, immigration and migration, capital flows, transnationalism, and identity politics?have contributed to social conditions in which religious belief and practice not only survive but prosper and proliferate. LEARN MORE

The objective of this conference is to muster the intellectual resources and research of experts in a variety of fields to better understand the prospects, patterns, and problems of religion and globalization in Asian societies in the near future.

RESERVATIONS MUST BE MADE BY MARCH 10; General Admission Fee (excluding lunch): $40. Students: $20. USF Faculty, students, and staff: Free. Please call (415) 422-6357 for more information.

Presented by The Kiriyama Chair for Pacific Rim Studies at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim. Sponsored by The Department of Theology and Religious Studies, The Asian Studies Degree Program, and The Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, at the University of San Francisco.

The USF Center for the Pacific Rim and Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies Mini-Festival at the



24 CITY
Saturday, 14 March | 3:30PM | PFA
Sunday, 15 March | 9:15PM | Kabuki

(China/Hong Kong/Japan, 2008, 107 mins) In Mandarin with English subtitles; DIRECTOR: Jia Zhang-ke

China's eminent filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns with an exquisite documentary/fiction hybrid that innovatively explores the still lives inhabiting Factory 420, a 50-year-old state-owned airplane munitions plant. The factory is a virtual city within the city of Chengdu, and is slowly being dismantled to give way to luxury apartment houses. Through interviews, both real and staged, its workers, many of whom have spent their entire lives within the confines of the factory's shops, schools and dormitories, narrate how its walls have come to embody China's modern history.

As the once-self-contained factory community is torn down, a collection of voices reveals the cycles of life that have sustained it over the decades. Fictionalized monologues are woven within real-life testimonies charting the factory's activities from the Korean War to the present day: stories of political engagement, love, regret and regeneration. In one fascinating sequence, actress Joan Chen plays Gu Minhua (a worker once fancied for her resemblance to Chen herself), and who is now living in the shadow of a love lost. Indeed, as Jia has commented, History is always a blend of fact and imagination. What emerges here is an elegy to a bygone city whose physical structures may be erased by the march of capitalist development, but whose memories live on.


PROJECT KASHMIR
Saturday, March 14 | 4:15PM | Kabuki
Sunday, March 15 | 3:30PM | PFA
Tuesday, March 17 | 4:15PM | Kabuki
Sunday, March 22 | 5:15PM | Camera

(USA | 2008 | 88 mins); In English, Hindi, Kashmiri & Urdu with English subtitles; DIRECTORS: Senain Kheshgi, Geeta Patel

In the scenic Kashmir Valley, saffron fields carpet the hilltops and shikaras glide along moonlit waters. A disputed territory between India and Pakistan for over 50 years, Kashmir was once called paradise on earth but is now scarred by extremist violence. This acclaimed documentary follows two American friends, Geeta and Senain, as they travel to Kashmir to discover the realities of daily life there, and why the bloodshed continues.

Shot by Academy-Award-winning filmmaker Ross Kauffman and edited by Billy McMillin, Project Kashmir follows the two friends as the breathtaking beauty of Kashmir gives way to constant reminders of conflict: paramilitary troops sporting AK-47s, trucks gutted by roadside bombs and abandoned homes crumbling into the earth. Geeta and Senain talk with villagers, journalists and human rights activists (though an informant warns them that double-speak is a way of life as well as a survival tactic). Unsure of whom to trust and what to believe, they find themselves on opposite sides of the divide, their bonds of friendship tested in a realm where one's identity is questioned at every turn.

Screened at DocuWeek and the 2008 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, Project Kashmir portrays not only the tragedy of human conflict and suffering, but the power of courage and friendship, even in the face of war.


THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN
Sunday, March 15 | 4:30PM | Kabuki
Tuesday, March 17 | 9:15PM | Kabuki

(USA | 2009 | 75 mins); World Premiere; DIRECTOR: Brittany Huckabee

With its red-and-gold fall colors and ducks swimming in the river, Morgantown seems an unlikely battleground for the soul of Islam in America. But that's what happens when journalist Asra Nomani walks up to the door of a nondescript mosque in the West Virginia university town. Her demand that women be allowed to pray with the men, instead of being relegated to the backroom, ignites a national controversy. The Mosque in Morgantown goes behind the sensational rebel in the mosque headlines to present a nuanced, complex portrait of the real tensions in a community that since 9/11 finds itself under a harsh spotlight. Instead of becoming a bio-pic about Nomani's own personal jihad, what emerges is a remarkably intimate portrait of a community in turmoil. A woman worries Nomani is just a provocateur out to sell books; a blonde Islamic convert switches sides, and an earnest medical student tries to find middle ground between the factions. But the issue is larger than women in mosques. Nomani sees it as the struggle for Muslims to live in the 21st century while being defined by the seventh century. It's also about the profoundly lonely struggle of taking on one's own community.

On the day of Eid, which should be about communal celebration and mounds of fragrant biryani, Nomani watches the fragile crescent of the moon from a Chuck E. Cheese parking lot. It's an achingly telling moment in a compelling documentary about the wrenching price of change.


THE FORGOTTEN WOMEN
Monday, March 16 | 6:45PM | Kabuki
Wednesday, March 18 | 6:30PM | Kabuki
Thursday, March 19 | 6:30PM | PFA

(Canada/India | 2008 | 90 mins); In English, Bengali & Hindi with English subtitles; DIRECTOR: Dilip Mehta

Dilip Mehta's documentary The Forgotten Women begins where his older sister Deepa Mehta's Water ended. While that film created a fictional story about the marginalization of widows in India, complete with professional actors and glossy sets, The Forgotten Women turns instead to real stories, unvarnished settings and actual widows. No mere companion piece to WATER, this free-form portrait of real widows has more than enough visual beauty, graceful compassion and understated anger to stand on its own, as Nathan Lee of The New York Times wrote.

The Forgotten Women begins in the city of widows, the Indian holy city of Vrindavan, with striking images of widows living in poverty. An older woman tells us, I was gifted to my husband when I was 5. He died and I became a widow. One by one my family died?I'm still here?there's nobody left to light the lamp. An activist asks, "Why is it that widows continue to come to Vrindavan despite the empowerment, the emancipation of woman?"

Director Dilip Mehta was a production designer on Water, and was inspired by having heard many of the widow's heartbreaking stories there. Mehta's internationally acclaimed background as a photojournalist finds a true translation in film; he manages to capture beautiful, harsh moments that tell the story, yet remain respectful to the widows who bare their soul. For Susan Walker of Toronto Star, the film is a powerful reminder of the forgotten, while the HotDocs Film Festival writes, the stories and images raise a powerful call for change.

For tickets and more information visit: http://festival.asianamericanmedia.org. KABUKI = Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 1881 Post St, San Francisco; CAMERA = Camera 12 Cinemas, 201 South Second Street, San Jose; PFA = Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley.

Monday, March 16, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall (Parker at Golden Gate in San Francisco)

Mosque in Morgantown: Islam and Feminism in West Virginia

After reporting from post-9/11 Pakistan, Indian Muslim Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani returns to the West Virginia town where she grew up to discover that the mosque there had been taken over by men she saw as extremists. The Mosque in Morgantown chronicles what happens when she decides to fight back - angering even the mosque?s moderates. As the film unfolds, it tells a story of competing paths to social change, American identity, and the nature of religion itself.

Join filmmaker Brittany Huckabee and Asra Nomani for clips of the film and a discusssion with the Center's Kiriyama Research Fellow Rachel Rinaldo, Ph.D., whose research on Islam and women?s activism in Indonesia provides a unique perspective on the film?s content.

The Mosque in Morgantown screens on Sunday, March 15, 4:30pm: Kabuki Theatres, SF (World Premiere); Tuesday, March 17, 9:15pm: Kabuki Theatres, SF; and Sunday, March 22, 5:15pm: Camera 12 Cinemas, San Jose, all as part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; reservations recommended. Please call (415) 422-6828.

A joint presentation of the USF Center for the Pacific Rim and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Visit the Festival website for more information. Co-sponsored by the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall (Parker at Golden Gate in San Francisco)

Hae-Nyo: Women of the Sea

In this one-hour film, a co-presentation by the Israeli and South Korean Consulates, we meet a community of South Korean island women who have lost their husbands to war, accidents, or desertion. Instead of giving up they bond and go down to the sea, not in ships, but in diving gear. There they free dive for a living, bringing back sea urchins, oysters, snails, and an occasional octopus or fish while also harvesting edible sea grasses. With this bounty they feed their families, young children and aging parents, selling the excess. They also farm plots on nearby fields to supplement their incomes. In her film Dahlia Gerstenhaber has captured these strong survivors who live on Cheju Island and dive into the ice-cold waters of the Korean Strait.

Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Ph.D., Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; reservations recommended. Please call (415) 422-6828.

A joint presentation of the USF Center for the Pacific Rim and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Visit the Festival website for more information. Co-sponsored by the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Lone Mountain Campus, Room 100 (Turk Boulevard between Masonic & Parker, SF)

From Monuments to Masses: New Asian/American Film
An evening with Chi-hui Yang, Director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

From the bustling streets of Kuala Lumpur to the quirks of suburban New Jersey, Asian and Asian American cinema reveals landscapes that are dynamic, interdependent and contradictory. Join Chi-hui Yang, Director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) as he explores the changing terrain of Asian/American cinema, and the program for the upcoming SFIAAFF, which runs from March 12-22, 2009.

Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Ph.D., Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; reservations recommended. Please call (415) 422-6828.

A joint presentation of the USF Center for the Pacific Rim and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Visit the Festival website for more information.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Lone Mountain Campus, Room 100 (Turk Boulevard between Masonic & Parker, SF)

Andrew X. Pham
In conversation with Gail Tsukiyama, author of The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, and Patrick Hatcher, Ph.D., Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim

The publication of Pham's first book, Catfish and Mandala, caused a sensation. The New York Times called it "remarkable," the Philadelphia Inquirer said it evokes "the full sadness of the human condition," and the Seattle Times compared this travel memoir to Thoreau, Kerouac, Steinbeck, and Mark Twain. Now Pham has expanded his horizon to chronicle three generations of his Vietnamese family as they struggle to survive three 20th century wars: French, Japanese, American. His new book, The Eaves of Heaven, has made Pham the leading voice among Vietnamese-Americans.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; reservations recommended. Please call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored byThe Asia Society Northern California, the World Affairs Council of Northern California, the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC Berkeley, the Mechanics' Institute, and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Lone Mountain Campus, Room 100 (Turk Boulevard between Masonic & Parker, SF)

Economic Trends In 2009
A presentation by Nicholas C. Hope, Ph.D., Director, Stanford Center for International Development

Nicholas Hope uses his twenty-three years at the World Bank to translate economic data in today's trends that will create tomorrow's reality. Will China and India be the economic engines that revive world trade? Will economic reforms from Washington cure Wall Street's failures, or corporate America's misfortunes? Dr. Hope has hope.

Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Ph.D., a Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; reservations recommended. Please call (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by the Asia Society Northern California, the USF School of Business and Management, the USF Department of Economics, the Mechanics' Institute, and the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall (Parker at Golden Gate in San Francisco)

Economic Earthquakes 2: A conversation with Hon. Bon-Woo Koo, Consul General of South Korea

South Korea is a trading tiger whose giant corporations reach around the Pacific Rim where they generate jobs and capital. With new leaders in Tokyo and Washington, and possible upheavals in Pyongyang, what are likely policy options?

Bon-Woo Koo graduated from Seoul National University and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 1980.

Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Ph.D., a Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; reservations recommended. Please call our event registration line at (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by the Asia Society Northern California, the Japan Society of Northern California, the Intercultural Institute of California, and the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Funded by the Kiriyama Chair for Pacific Rim Studies at USF.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 5:45 PM
USF Lone Mountain Campus, Room 100
Turk @ Chabot, San Francisco

Economic Earthquakes 1: A conversation with Hon. Yasumasa Nagamine, Consul General of Japan

Japan is the world's second largest economy, and how this Pacific powerhouse reacts to the current economic crisis will impact global markets. With new leaders in Tokyo and Washington, and possible upheavals in Pyongyang, what are likely policy options?

Yasumasa Nagamine graduated from Tokyo University and joined Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1977.

Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, Ph.D., a Kiriyama Distinguished Fellow at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim, will moderate.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; reservations recommended. Please call our event registration line at (415) 422-6828.

Cosponsored by the Asia Society Northern California, the Japan Society of Northern California, the Intercultural Institute of California, and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.