-
Instruction takes place at the Beijing Film Academy, and lodging
will be provided at the Academy’s well-equipped foreign student
dorms.
- Students take all of eight mini-courses, taught by filmmakers
and various professors from the Beijing Film Academy and from outside
Asia. - Depending
on the students' and instructors' interests, course topics vary from
year to year.
- For current and future teachers of Chinese cinema, an additional
workshop will be held on designing an effective syllabus for teaching
Chinese cinema.
•
Regular lectures take
place three to four days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday
and Friday), 9:30-11:30 am and 1-3 pm, followed by a film
screening in the evening (a total of 8 mini-courses
of 12 hours each).
• Once or twice a week, an additional 2-hour class is scheduled
for meetings with film directors
(time varies, depending on the guest speaker's convenience).
• Guided excursions to
locations in and around Beijing, ranging from tourist sites (including
the Great Wall) to film locations (including the Beijing Film Studio
lot and traditional courtyards), artists' studios, and the National
Film Museum. These excursions typically take place once to twice a week,
for 5 to 8 hours each.
• Additional activities include
screenings at film theaters and drama performances.
• To fully satisfy the course requirements for a grade, students
must participate in all scheduled lectures and activities, write reading
responses and journal entries, and write a final paper, 5 pages long
(undergrads) or 15 pages long (graduate students), due September 3.
Upon successful completion of the program, students will receive
12 quarter credits (10 for graduate students) in the Comparative
Literature-Cinema Studies track at the University of Washington.
Non-UW students can transfer these credits to their
home institutions, pending approval of their advisors. The credits are
based on 120 contact hours.
For UW students these courses will register as:
• Comparative Literature 397 (special topics in cinema studies,
5 credits, VLPA)
Grade based on participation and two 5-page papers.
• Comparative Literature 497 (special topics in cinema studies,
5 credits, VLPA)
Grade based on participation and three 5-page papers.
• Comparative Literature 490 (directed study, 2 credits)
Grade based on participation; this is a credit / no credit course.
The program satisfies the UW Cinema Studies Major requirement for a
course in a national cinema.
Graduate and post-graduate students will be registered under
Comparative Literature 497 (special topics in cinema studies, 5 credits),
Comparative Literature 596 (special studies in comparative literature,
5 credits) and Comparative Literature 490 (directed study, 2 credits).
Assignments will be tailored to students' interests and to the requirements
of their home institutions' graduate programs.
The
schedule for the Summer 2008 program included:
Monday June 30
9:30-10:30 Yomi Braester,Orientation
10:30-12:00 Yomi Braester, Globalizing Beijing
2:00-4:00 Screening: Beijing Bicycle
4 :30-6:30 Yomi Braester, Globalizing Beijing
Tuesday July 1
9:30-11:30 Yomi Braester, The documentary
impulse
2:00-3:30 Screening: A Disappearance Foretold
4:00-6:00 Meeting with critic and filmmaker Zhang Yaxuan
Evening screening: Yellow Earth
Wednesday
July 2
9:30-1:00 Media Art exhibition at the National Museum
of China
3:00-4:00 Visit to the Lao She Memorial
7:00 Drama performance: Da huaju
Thursday
July 3
9:30-11:30 Chris Berry: Introduction to "the national"
1:00-4:00 Screenings: Perpetual Motion
Railroad
of Hope
4:00-6:00 Meeting with director Ning Ying
Evening screening: In the Mood for Love
Friday
July 4
9:30-11:30 Huang Yong, animation studies at BFA
1 :30-3:30 Huang Yong, stop-motion animation
4:00-6:00 Chris Berry, graduate seminar: The Figure of History
Evening screening: Stage Sisters
Sunday July 6
Afternoon: Vsit to the Beijing Urban Planning Exhibition
Hall
8:00-10:30 Screening at Cherry Lane: And the Spring Comes,
followed by Q&A with director Gu Changwei
Monday
July 7
9:30-11:30 Chris Berry, How should a Chinese Woman Look
1:00-3:00 Zhang Xianmin, Independent filmmaking
4:00-6:00 Screening: Raised from Dust
Tuesday
July 8
9:30-11:30 Chris Berry: The national in the transnational
1:00-3:00 Zhang Xianmin, Independent filmmaking
3:30-5:30 Screening: Still Life
Wednesday July 9
9:30-11:30 James Tweedie, cinematic realisms
1:00-4:00 Screening: Crime and Punishment
4:00-6:00 Meeting with director Zhao Liang
Thursday
July 10
Evening screening:
The Banquet
Friday
July 11
10:00-8:00 Visit to artist community in Songzhuang,
including visit to the Independent Film Archives; conversation
with Zhu Rikun; meeting with director Wang Wo; screenings of
Noise, Above and Below, and Bing'ai
Saturday July 12
11:00-1:00 visit to Wu Wenguang's
studio, including meeting with Wu Wenguang and screening of
parts of the China DV project
2:00-3:00 Screening of experimental videos by students
at the Central Academy of Fine Arts
Monday July 14
9:30-11:30 Dai Jinhua,
The hero phenomenon
1:00-2:30
Screening: Video art by Cao Fei
4:00-5:00 Meeting with
video artist Cao Fei
Tuesday
July 15
9:30-11:30 Dai Jinhua, film and the international festival
circuit
2 :00-3:30 Screening: Dragon Whisker Creek
4:00-6:00 Yomi Braester, From Dragon Whisker Creek to Goldfish
Ponds
Wednesday July 16
Day trip to the Great Wall at Simatai
Thursday
July 17
9:30-11:30 David Xu,
contemporary video art
2:00-4:30 David Xu, contemporary video art 5:00-6:30 creening: Black Canon
Incident
Friday
July 18
9:30-11:30 James Tweedie, QQQ
2:00-4:30 Screening: Samsara
4:30-6:30 Meeting with Huang Jianxin, director
and producer
Saturday
July 19
Morning: Visit to Dragon Whisker Creek
Monday
July 21
9:30-11:30 James Tweedie, Film
and globalization
2:00-5:00 MuDeyuan, A comparative
history of Chinese cinematography
Evening screening: Soul Searching
Tuesday
July 22
9:30-11:30 James Tweedie, Film
and globalization
Afternoon
(optional) Meeting with Cui Yongyuan
Wednesday
July 23
9:30-11:30 Yomi Braester, Tiananmen in film
2:00-4:00 Meeting with director Wanma Caidan
4:30-7:30 Graduate student presentations
Thursday July 24
10:30-11:30 Tour to Beijing Film Studio and
soundstages of the TV series Dream of the Red Chamber
1:30-3:00 Screening: Dream of the Bridal Chamber
3:30-5:30 Meeting with director Guo Baochang
Friday
July 25
9:30-10:30 James Tweedie, Rescripting Beijing
10:30-12:00 Student presentations
2:00-4:00 Yomi Braester, concluding discussion
Reading assignments for the 2008 seminar:
Ackbar Abbas, “Building on Disappearance”
Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, China on Screen (selection) Yomi Braester, “Chinese cinema in the Age of Advertisement”
Yomi Braester, “Tracing the City's Scars”
Marie-Anne Broudehoux, “The Malling of Wangfujing”
Dai Jinhua, “Severed Bridge” and “Invisible Writing”
Definitions: “Realism”; “Documentary”
Dogma 95, “Vow of Chastity”
Valerie Jaffe, “Every Man a Star”
Matthew Johnson, “A Scene beyond Our Line of Sight”
Rem Koolhaas, “Junkspace”
Lao She, Dragon Beard Ditch
Ni Zhen, Memoirs from BFA (selection)
The schedule for the Summer 2007 program included:
WEEK 1
Independent Filmmaking in
China; Beijing in Film
Monday July 2
Zhang Xianmin, Independent documentary films Yomi
Braester, Recording the city’s transformation
Screening: Shower
Tuesday July 3
Zhang Xianmin,
Independent feature films Yomi Braester, Tiananmen as a monumental and
everyday space
Yomi Braester, The commercial city Xu
Dawei, New media
Screening: The World
Tuesday
July 24
Zhong Dafeng, Chinese film theory James
Tweedie, Globalism I
Screening: Uproar in Heaven II
Wednesday
July 25
Tour to Beijing
Film Studio
Thursday July 26
James Tweedie, Globalism
II Huang Yong, Chinese animation
Friday
July 27
Yomi and James, debriefing Huang Yong, stop-motion lab
links to our animated films coming soon
The
curriculum Summer 2006 included:
• Chinese
Cinema and the Nation (Chris Berry, University of London)
• Beijing in Film and Media I (Yomi Braester,
University of Washington)
• The Development of Chinese Film Concepts and their Relationship
with Traditional Chinese Aesthetics (Zhong Dafeng, Beijing Film Academy)
• Chinese New Media: Digital Arts, Print, and Photograghy
(Xu Dawei, Beijing Film Academy)
• Love in Early Chinese cinema (Li Ershi, Beijing
Film Academy)
• Cinematic Realisms (James Tweedie, University
of Washington)
• Beijing in Film and Media II (Yomi Braester,
University of Washington)
• Globalism and Contemporary Cinema (James Tweedie,
University of Washington)
