Revisiting Indigenous Articulations: A Film Screening and Discussion with Anita Chang

Friday, November 22, 2019
6:30 pm

Harbour Centre 1800 Terasen Cinema
Simon Fraser University - Vancouver Campus
515 West Hastings Street

Free & Open to the Public
Please register here

DESCRIPTION

What is at stake in generating and representing Indigenous articulations in Asia and the Pacific? Articulations in this usage encompass both attempts to generate meanings and new connections and relations that cut across the boundaries of nation-states. To help engage with this question, we are delighted to welcome filmmaker, educator, and writer Anita Chang for a screening and discussion of Tongues of Heaven, a collaboratively directed experimental documentary film project that brings together the work of four Indigenous female filmmakers: An-Chi Chen and Shin-Lan Yu from Taiwan and Leivallyn Kainoa Kaupu and Monica Hauʻoli Waiau from Hawai‘i. This film represents in at-times unexpected ways efforts at Indigenous language revitalization, responses to settler colonial education policies, and the impact of extreme climate variability on Indigenous communities.

Following the screening, Anita will discuss the film, as well as demo the companion web application named Root Tongue. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Guy Beauregard.

Film Trailer

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Anita Chang is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, East Bay. Anita was born to parents who immigrated to the US from Taiwan in the 1960s, fleeing a dictatorship. Her works have been screened and broadcast internationally, and been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Walker Arts Center, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and National Museum of Women. Her essays have published in positions: asia critique, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, and Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies. Her essay “Altered States for a Critical Cosmopolitanism” was published as part of Routledge’s AFI Film Readers series book, Teaching Transnational Cinema and Media: Politics and Pedagogy.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Guy Beauregard is a Professor at National Taiwan University and received his PhD from the University of Alberta. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Amerasia Journal, Canadian Literature, Concentric, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, International Journal of Canadian Studies, Studies in Canadian Literature, Tamkang Review, and West Coast Line. He is also the co-editor (with Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and Hsiu-chuan Lee) of The Subject(s) of Human Rights: Crises, Violations, and Asian/American Critique scheduled to be published by Temple University Press in December 2019. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at SFU's Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research where he is thinking and writing about Indigenous articulations in the Pacific, the transpacific dimensions of remembering White Terror, and transitional justice initiatives in Taiwan.

CO-SPONSORS

David See-chai Lam Centre
Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research