BARD IN CHINA TO HOST FILM SCREENING MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15 Screening of Morning Sun, a Documentary Narrative of China’s Cultural Revolution, Will Feature Discussion with Filmmaker Carma Hinton

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Few events of the 20th century have so dramatically engulfed such a large portion of humanity as China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. On Monday, November 15, Bard in China will host a screening of Morning Sun, a documentary film that explores the impact of the Cultural Revolution through interviews with people, including relatives of key figures at the time, who lived through it. The film will be introduced by Bard political science professor Nara Dillon and will be followed by a discussion with one of the filmmakers, Carma Hinton. The event takes place at 7 p.m. in Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. It is presented by Bard in China with support from the Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative. Written and directed and produced by Hinton, Richard Gordon, and Geremie R. Barmé, Morning Sun (2003) creates an inner history of the Cultural Revolution. It provides a multiperspective view of a tumultuous period as seen through the eyes—and reflected through the hearts and minds—of members of the generation that was born around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and that came of age in the 1960s. Others join them evoking and examining the period, charting for viewers the psychological and emotional topography of high-Maoist China. Included are interviews with Wang Guangmei and Liu Ting, the widow and daughter of China’s state president, Liu Shaoqi, the main target of the Cultural Revolution; the sister of Yu Luoke, a critic of the Cultural Revolution who was executed in 1970; and a founding member of the Red Guard movement. Morning Sun has been featured at numerous film festivals, in Berlin, Hong Kong, Seattle, and elsewhere. The film won the award for Best Documentary at the Cinemasia Film Festival in Amsterdam. About the filmmakers: Carma Hinton, director, producer and writer, was born in Beijing in 1949 and lived there until she was twenty-one. Chinese is her first language and culture. She is a scholar as well as a filmmaker, with a Ph.D. in art history from Harvard University. She has taught Chinese language, history, and culture at Wellesley, Swarthmore, and MIT. Morning Sun was deeply influenced by Hinton’s personal and firsthand understanding of the politics and history of the period and her direct witness of and participation in many of the events of the Cultural Revolution, which began when she was 16. All interviews were conducted by Hinton in Chinese. Richard Gordon, director and producer, has been involved with numerous projects in China. His credits include work for National Geographic, the National Film Board of Canada, Nova, Frontline, The American Experience, the independent feature documentary Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China, and the PBS series China in Revolution. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986 and a Rockefeller Intercultural Film/Video Fellowship in 1988. Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon have directed 10 documentary films about China, including Small Happiness, First Moon, All Under Heaven, Abode of Illusion, and The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Geremie R. Barmé, director, producer, and writer, lived and studied in China (Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenyang) during the last years of the Cultural Revolution, and then worked for a Chinese monthly in Hong Kong in the late 1970s. He wrote regularly for the Hong Kong press and is the author of two collections of essays in Chinese. He is the coeditor of Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience (New York, 1988) and New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices (New York, 1992). He is the author of Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (New York, 1996); In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York, 1999); and An Artistic Exile: A Life of Feng Zikai (1898-1975) (Berkeley, 2002.). He is the editor and main translator of the journalist Sang Ye’s latest volume of Chinese oral histories, Chairman Mao’s Ark: The People on the People’s Republic (forthcoming, 2003). His many translations include Ba Jin’s essays, Random Thoughts (Hong Kong, 1984), and the Cultural Revolution memoirs of Yang Jiang, Lost in the Crowd (Melbourne 1989). He was an associate director and cowriter of the documentary film The Gate of Heavenly Peace (1995). He has written extensively on politics, culture, intellectual history, and art for Chinese-language and English magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. He is a research professor in the Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, where he is also the editor of the journal East Asian History. For more information about the forum, please call 845-758-7388 or e-mail [email protected]. # # # (10.26.04)

Website: https://inside.bard.edu/academic/programs/bardinchina/

This event was last updated on 11-17-2004

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