participants

preliminary list of participants

Participant list will be updated as confirmations arrive.

film scholars

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), and the forthcoming books A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia, 2008) and a monograph on Jia Zhang-ke, The Hometown Trilogy (British Film Institute, 2008). 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).

CHEN Xihe is Professor and Deputy Dean of the School of Film and TV Art and Technology, Shanghai University. His recent papers and books include "Chinese Experiences in the Films of the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong" (2001), "Aesthetics and the Political Economy of Chinese Cinema" (2003),"On Xie Jin's Films" (2004), Film and TV in a Cross-cultural Context (2002), Film and TV Criticism: Theory and Practice (2003). His publications in English include: "Shadowplay (Ying-Xi): Chinese Film Aesthetics and Their Philosophical and Cultural Fundamentals" (1990), "On the Father Figures in Zhang Yimou's Films", (Asian Cinema, Fall 2004), and Film in Contemporary China: 1979-1989 (1993, co-authored).

Paul CLARK is Professor of Chinese at the School of Asian Studies, University of Auckland, New Zealand, as well as Director of the China Studies Centre at the New Zealand Asia Institute. Paul is an acclaimed author, having published several books on Chinese culture including Reinventing China: A Generation and its Films (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2006) and Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 (Cambridge University Press, 1988). His latest book is The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

CUI Shuqin is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College. She is the author of Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (University of Hawaii Press, March 2003). She has also published articles such as "Ning Ying's Beijing Trilogy: Cinematic Configuration of Age, Class and Sexuality" in The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the 21st Century (Duke University Press, 2006) and "Raise the Red Lantern: Cinematic Orient and Female Conflict" in Film Analysis: A Norton Reader (W.W. Norton & Company, May 2005).

John LENT is Professor of International Communication at the School of Communications and Theater, Temple University and Editor of The International Journal of Comic Art. He has been teaching at the college/university level since 1960, including stints as founder and coordinator of Universiti Sains Malaysia communications program; Rogers Distinguished Chair at University of Western Ontario; visiting professor at Shanghai University, Communication University of China, and Jilin Colleage of the Arts Animation School; and professor, Temple University (1974-present). Prof. Lent pioneered in the study of mass communication and popular culture in Asia (since 1964) and Caribbean (since 1968), comic art and animation, and development communication. He has authored or edited 70 books. Additionally, he edits International Journal of Comic Art (which he founded) and Asian Cinema.

Sheldon LU is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of half a dozen books. His most recent book is Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in Literature and Visual Culture (University of Hawaii Press, 2007).




Seio NAKAJIMA is Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Hawai'i at Manoa. His main research interests lie in the sociological analysis of Chinese film. At the macro level, he expands economic sociology and organizational theory to elucidate the emergence of market mechanism in the Chinese film industry as a creation of institutions necessary for markets to exist such as laws, regulations, forms of property rights, cultural conception of control, as well as distinct strategies and structures of organizations in the three sectors of production, distribution, and exhibition. At the micro level, he is interested in the social practice of watching Chinese independent films in contemporary urban China.

Paul PICKOWICZ is Distinguished Professor of History and Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego and the inaugural holder of the UC San Diego Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History. His main research interest is the social and cultural history of 20th century China. He has two specialties: 1) village life in North China and 2) the history of Chinese filmmaking. His books include Chinese Village, Socialist State (Yale), New Chinese Cinemas (Cambridge), Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China (Yale), From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (Rowman and Littlefield), Popular China (Roman and Littlefield), Unofficial China (Westview), Marxist Litrerary Thought in China (University of California), and The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford). In 1993 he won the Joseph R. Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies for the best book on 20th century China in any discipline. A new book, Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China was recently published by Harvard.

QIN Liyan is Lecturer at the Chinese Department of Peking University, China. She got her Ph.D degree in Literature at the University of California, San Diego in 2007, with her dissertation focusing on Chinese film adaptations.




Robert Rosen is Dean of the UCLA School of Theater Film and Television where he oversees programs that include the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, the Department of Theater, the Film & Television Archive, the Billy Wilder Theater, and the School's relationship with the Geffen Playhouse. Rosen is an educator, critic and preservationist who specializes on issues of media and historical memory. After receiving degrees from Rutgers University in political science and Stanford University in history, he taught in the history departments at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania before joining UCLA’s Department of Film and Television in 1974. From 1975 to the present, he has also served as Founding Director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive and from 1993-1998 served as Chair of the Department of Film and Television.

Stanley ROSEN is Director of the East Asian Studies Center at USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Professor in the USC Department of Political Science specializing in Chinese politics and society. He studied Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong and has traveled to mainland China more than 35 times over the last 28 years. The author or editor of six books and numerous articles, Professor Rosen has written on such topics as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, and film and the media. He is the co-editor of Chinese Education and Society and a frequent guest editor of other translation journals. His most recent book is State and Society in 21st Century China: Crisis, Contention and Legitimation, co-edited with Peter Hays Gries (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004).

Stephen TEO is Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and a senior associate of RMIT University. He is currently conducting research into Asian cinemas, and is the author of Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: BFI, 1997), Wong Kar-wai (BFI, 2005), King Hu's A Touch of Zen (Hong Kong University Press, 2007), and Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film (HKU Press, 2007). He is now working on his next book, The Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition, to be published by the Edinburgh University Press.

WANG Shujen is Associate Professor and Director of Media Studies in the Department of Visual & Media Arts, Emerson College, and Research Associate in the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University. Author of Framing Piracy: Globalization and Film Distribution in Great China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), Dr. Wang's research interests include media globalization, film distribution and piracy, and issues surrounding networks, space, and technology. In addition to having contributed book chapters to several anthologies, her work has appeared in Cinema Journal, Film Quarterly, Asian Cinema, Positions, Public Culture, Theory Culture & Society, Policy Futures in Education, East Asia: An International Quarterly, Global Media Journal, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Visual Anthropology, Gazette, Text, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Asian Journal of Communication, and Media Asia, among others. Her work has also been translated into Portuguese and Chinese. She is currently working on Neon Gods: The Films and Writings of Tsai Ming-liang, a book she co-authors with Chris Fujiwara.

XIAO Zhiwei is Associate Professor of History at Cal State San Marcos. He earned a BA in Chinese language and literature from Liaoning Teacher's University, an MA in Chinese aesthetics from Sichuan University, an MA in liberal studies from the College of St. Rose, and a PhD in modern Chinese history from the University of California at San Diego. His research interests are in Chinese film and popular culture. 


XU Ying is is Assistant Editor of International Journal of Comic Art and Asian Cinema. She has published many articles in U.S. and Chinese periodicals: Yishu (Art), Shijie zhishi huabao (World Affairs Pictorial), Meishu (Arts), Fengci yu youmo (Humor and Satire), etc. and has presented papers on Chinese cartooning at ICAF, Popular Culture Association, Asian Cinema Studies Society, International Association for Media and Communication Research, etc.


ZHANG Yingjin is Director of Chinese Studies Program and Professor of Chinese Literature and Film, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Studies at University of California-San Diego. He is the author of The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time, and Gender (Stanford, 1996), Screening China: Critical Interventions, Cinematic Reconfigurations, and the Transnational Imaginary in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Center for Chinese Studies, Michigan, 2002), and Chinese National Cinema (Routledge, 2004); co-author of Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (Routledge, 1998); editor of China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative Literature (Stanford, 1998) and Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943 (Stanford, 1999); and co-editor of From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

ZHU Ying is Associate Professor of Media Culture at College at Staten Island, City University of New York. Her research focuses on Chinese film and television, comparative media studies, and global media. Her publications have appeared in leading media journals such as Cinema Journal, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, Journal of Communication, Consumption, Markets & Culture, and various edited book volumes. She is the author of Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: the Ingenuity of the System (2003) and Television in Post-Reform China: Serial Drama, Confucian Leadership and Global Television Market (2008). She is currently working on three Chinese film and television related book volumes. She serves as a Chinese media expert and contributor to New York Times "China Studies" website. She is the recipient of American Research in the Humanities in China Fellowship (2007-08) and the 2006 Fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities.

filmmakers/film industry

FENG Xiaogang is a Chinese film director who has made a string of hit comedies over the past six years satirizing modern China's materialistic society. He probably achieved his full fame as the director of the movie Dream Factory (1997). The film was a hit in China and established a genre called "Hesui Pian (贺岁片)" (New Year Films) in Chinese cinema. Feng went on to direct such hit films as Big Shot's Funeral (2001), Cell Phone (2003), The Banquet (2006), and recently The Assembly (2007).

David LEE is Managing Director of Xinhua Media Entertainment. Prior to this, Lee was the Executive Vice President of Asian Operations at The Weinstein Company, where he oversaw the company's business in Asia as well as its $285 million Asian Film Fund. Before joining TWC, Lee produced Already Dead, an action-thriller, which was distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment in Q1-2008. He is also a Co-Executive Producer of the Jackie Chan and Jet Li starring film, The Forbidden Kingdom, which will be released in Q2-2008. Lee has more than 10 years of experience in the entertainment industry where he directly supported the President and CFO of Columbia Tristar Motion Pictures Group and RevolutionStudios in the Business Development and Strategic Planning Departments.

Woody MU is Manager of Distribution Services of Warner Bros. Technical Operations. A graduate and former lecturer at the Beijing Film Academy, he came to the United States in 1984 as a visiting scholar, engaging in research at California State University, Northridge and at USC. In 1989, he co-founded the Los Angeles Chinese Broadcasting Company and became a TV journalist and news producer. Woody has also been involved in numerous overseas Chinese film projects such as CEO by Wu Tianming and Hi Frank by Huang Shuqin, as well as TV drama series such as Green Card by Hu Xueyang and Together We Live and Die by Lu Xiaowei. In 1998, he joined Warner Bros. to handle the Chinese language dubbing business for the company and was later promoted to his current position as a manager in charge of distribution services for Canada, China and Southeast Asia.

Peter SHIAO is Chairman and founder of Ironpond, a China and US based entertainment producer and financier that specializes in Chinese co-productions. In addition to working on its growing roster of projects, the company works closely with the China Film Co-Productions Corporation and the worldwide Shaolin organization on their international strategy. Prior to founding Ironpond, he was managing director of multi-platform digital studio, Ionic studios, and produced Restless, the first ever Sino-US film co-production under Celestial Pictures, and served as the organizer and chairman of the US-China Film Industry Conference backed by the White House and China's SARFT. He is proud to have sold the first script he ever developed, Charlie Apana, to John Woo's Lion Rock as a vehicle for Chow Yun Fat.

SONG Dai is Chairman and General Manager of Sil-Metropole Organisation, Ltd., Hong Kong. Trained as an economist, he has been engaged in the film industry since 1993 and has been the chairman of the board and the general manager of Sil-Metropole Organisation Ltd. since June 2005. Prior to that position he served first as head of production at the innovative Xi'an Film Studio (1993-1995) and then as the Deputy Director of that studio. He has also been the Deputy Vice-President of the Western Film Group. He was the executive producer of such prominent films as Lust, Caution, Hero, Warriors of Heaven and Earth, Invisible Target, and Flying Butterfly.

Vivian WU is an actress and producer. She was born in Shanghai, China, in 1966 as Wu Jun Mei. She started acting at age 15 with the Shanghai Film Studio, and then later studied Travel Industry Management at Hawaii's Pacific University. After that she played 'Wen Hsiu' in the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (1987) directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. In 1993 Vivian was cast by directer Oliver Stone in Heaven & Earth (1993) and The Joy Luck Club (1993). Since then she has been working constantly in film and television and was cast by directer Peter Greenaway in 8 1/2 Women (1999) and The Pillow Book (1996), in which she starred alongside Ewan McGregor.

Janet YANG is has a long history in both Hollywood and China -- she is known for her prestigious and award-winning films, and as a bridge between two cultures. In the early 80’s, she discovered now world-famous directors such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, whose films she imported. That in turn led to a position with MCA-Universal, where she brokered the first post-war sale of American studio films to China. She then became Steven Spielberg’s liaison in China for the shooting of the historic film, EMPIRE OF THE SUN. Once bitten by the production bug, she continued to work as a production executive at Universal. In 1989, Oliver Stone asked her to become his partner in their new company, Ixtlan. While there, she produced such acclaimed, award-winning films as THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, and INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL, as well as assisting Mr. Stone in his body of work. Following her tenure at Ixtlan, she formed The Manifest Film Company with partner Lisa Henson. There she continued to produce prestigious fare with top talent: ZERO EFFECT, SAVIOR, THE WEIGHT OF WATER, and HIGH CRIMES. Ms. Yang recently produced DARK MATTER, helmed by celebrated theater director Chen Shi-Zheng, and starring Meryl Streep, Aidan Quinn, and China’s young star, Liu Ye.

LI Yang is the critically acclaimed director of Blind Shaft (2003) and Blind Mountain (2007). His films turn a sharply critical eye towards China's continuing social problems. His films have been nominated for and won several awards from international film festivals, including the Berlin International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Hong Kong International Film Festival.



ZHANG Lihui is Vice President of China Government Relations & Business Development at Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Upon obtaining a Ph.D. from the School of Cinema-TV at the University of Southern California in January of 1995, she became a full time employee at Warner Bros to handle China affairs for both Theatrical and Home Video. Nine months later, she was assigned to assist in setting up the first representative office for Warner Bros. in China, becoming chief representative. She left Theatrical and has focused on Home Video (WHV) since 1997. As a territory General Manager she has been involved in distributing WHV titles and the DVD launch in China. In 2004, when WHV took a significant strategic move in the country, she was involved in the establishment of CAV-Warner, a joint venture between the China Audio-Video Publishing House and WHV. She now serves as Vice President in charge of government relations and business development for WHV in the Beijing office.

ZHOU Tiedong is President of China Film Promotion International (CFPI), a company directly under China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT), which is a combined and concerted force of the overall Chinese film industry, acting as the Chinese counterpart of Unifrance or MPA for promoting Chinese cinema worldwide and exchanges in film culture between China and the rest of the world. He has been in this position for about two years now since CFPI was formally incorporated in June 2006 as a joint-stock enterprise with the staunch administrative backing of SARFT. Before this, he served as the Vice President, Acquisitions, of China Film Import and Export Corporation of China Film Group, the largest film conglomerate in the country and the sole importer of foreign films authorized by the Chinese Government. He started his career in film business in 1984, and over the past 24 years, he was appointed to Los Angeles to be business manager and later president of the China Film Import and Export (L.A.), Inc., a subsidiary of the China Film Group, for a span of ten years. With his long time hands-on experience, expertise and research in the film business and film studies, he is well renowned as one of the top film executives and scholars in China.