CEAS Special Lecture & Film Screening
CARMA HINTON - "A Visual and Visceral Connection to the Cultural Revolution: Challenges of Putting History on Film"
6:00pm - Screening of "Morning Sun" (2003) produced and directed by Carma Hinton, Geremie R. Barmé, and Richard Gordon
8:00 (approx.) - Director's Comments and Panel Discussion
Carma Hinton will describe the complex choices the filmmakers faced in the making of Morning Sun. She will discuss the use of revolutionary cultural productions of the past as a framing and commentary device within the film. She will also explore the issues of visual representation and both the possibilities and the limitations of using film as a medium to convey history.
Panel discussants:
Jean Ma, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Stanford University
Christian Henriot, Visiting Scholar, Stanford Humanities Center
Carma Hinton was born in Beijing in 1949 and raised and educated there until 1971. The Morning Sun project has been deeply influenced by Hinton's personal and first-hand 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 sixteen years old. All interviews were conducted by Hinton in Chinese.
She has produced and directed 13 documentary films about China, including many award-winning pioneering works, from her early ethnographic works, such as "Stilt Dancers" and "Small Happiness," to important historical examinations, such as "The Gate of Heavenly Peace" and "Morning Sun."
Hinton has a PhD in art history from Harvard University and has held teaching positions at Swarthmore College, Wellesley College, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, she has lectured widely on Chinese culture, history and film at educational institutions in the United States and around the world.
Awards she has received include two George Foster Peabody Awards, the American Historical Association's John E. O'Connor Film Award, the International Critics Prize and the Best Social and Political Documentary at the Banff Television Festival, as well as nominations for Best Documentary Feature by the National Film Board of Canada, the ABCNEWS VideoSource and Pare Lorentz Awards by the International Documentary Association, and a National News and Documentary Emmy Award.