Dear Friends of HKSI,
At the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative (HKSI), we are pleased to offer a platform for the showcase and the discussion of Hong Kong-related films among other creative work.
Last month, we organized and sponsored the Vancouver premiere of Far Far Away 緣路山旮旯 at UBC, attracting a full house of enthusiastic audience who were joined by director Amos Why for an in person post-screening talk. In December, we will be holding the screening of Keep Rolling 動態 Rolling, which consists of four short films made by four directors about Hong Kong under the pandemic, as part of our City Rebegins events.
Meanwhile, we are delighted to host the visit of Prof. Joseph Cho-wai Chan (Princeton University) to UBC to promote intellectual exchange across disciplines. On 23 and 25 November, Prof. Chan will deliver one talk in English on campus and one talk in Cantonese in the community, respectively. We look forward to contributing to a wide range of community-university conversations.
Last but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support.
Dr. Helena Wu
Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Studies
Convenor, Hong Kong Studies Initiative 共研香江
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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Talk
23 November 2022, 17:30 – 19:00 PT
The Moral Limits of Violence in Political Resistance
Prof. Joseph Cho–wai Chan, Princeton University
Place of Many Trees, Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC
6476 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver
A City Rebegins event.
Registration: hksi.ubc.ca/events/event/talk-the-moral-limits-of-violence-in-political-resistance/
The talk will examine whether violence in political resistance against state injustice is morally permissible. Contemporary analytic political and legal philosophy seldom discusses this question, and the literature of nonviolent disobedience does not offer much help. The most relevant literature seems to be the ethics of war and the ethics of individual self-defense, in which four principles are commonly employed to assess the moral limits of force – just cause, reasonable prospect of success, necessity, and proportionality. This talk examines the the extent to which these principles can provide practical moral guidance for participants in resistance movements that are highly dynamic and open-ended.
Joseph Cho-wai Chan is Global Scholar and Visiting Professor at University Center for Human Values of Princeton University. He has taught at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong for three decades. Since 2021, he has been a Visiting Scholar at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences (RCHSS), Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and will be a Distinguished Research Fellow at the RCHSS from February 2023. His recent research interests span Confucian political philosophy, comparative political theory, and contemporary theories of democracy and liberalism. He is the author of Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, 2014) and co-edited with Melissa Williams and Doh Shin East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide (Cambridge, 2016). He has been published in numerous journals such as Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, History of Political Thought, the Journal of Democracy, Philosophy East and West, and China Quarterly. His latest articles are “Equality, Friendship, and Politics” (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2021) and (with Brian Wong) “How Should Liberal Democratic Governments Treat Conscientious Disobedience as A Response to State Injustice? A Proposal” (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 2022).
This talk is organized by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative in partnership with the Department of Political Science, and generously co-sponsored by: Department of Asian Studies, Department of History, Centre for Chinese Research, Department of Theatre and Film, Public Humanities Hub, the School of Social Work and UBC Community Engagement.
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Screening + Conversation
Keep Rolling 動態 Rolling (2022):
Four Directors, Four Stories About Hong Kong under the Pandemic
Friday, 2 December 2022, 18:00 – 20:30 PT
Place of Many Trees, Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC
6476 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver
Limited seats available.
Registration required: hksi.ubc.ca/events/event/screening-conversation-keep-rolling
Hong Kong | 2022 | 108 min | In Cantonese, English, Minnan with Chinese & English subtitles
In the age of pandemic, everything seems to be frozen. In fact, there are still many things that we can do. The short film project Keep Rolling captures alienation and sorrow through four short films.
In “Same Boat” (directed by Lo Yan Chi), Yin’s grandma has not returned to Xiamen for two years since the pandemic and Yin has to take care of her at home every day. They share each other sentiments as if sitting on the same boat.
“Rubbish Ban” (directed by Chow King Kan Kingston) sees a young man Genius dumped by his girlfriend because of a piece of garbage. His boss also told him to throw a cardboard box but he barely found any trash cans. Only then did he realize that the trash cans that used to be everywhere had totally disappeared. Is Hong Kong, which can’t even hold a trash can, still the city that we used to be familiar with?
In “A Letter from Prison” (directed by Yiu Man Kwan Jason), film director James planned to write letters to Man to support him through his hard time in prison, Although he was outside the wall, the freedom of his mind was also bound by invisible shackles. This made him question if the world is just another prison.
“April’s Interlude” (directed by Kwok Chung Yee Erica) tells a story of a cosmetologist Shan under lockdown during the pandemic. An old friend suddenly appeared, filling Shan’s feeling of loneliness; however, after learning about each other’s life, Shan felt that the friend who returned after leaving Hong Kong had an incomprehensible detachment from what happened in Hong Kong in the past few years. In the end, Shan made a choice in the struggle between emotion and reason.
Watch the trailer here
香港 | 2022 | 108 分鐘 | 粵語、英語、閩南語對白,中英文字幕
導演: 羅恩賜 、周敬勤、姚敏堃、 郭頌儀
疫情時代下所有事物仿佛都定格,其實可做之事仍然不少,一於動態Rolling,用電影述說時下的疏離與憂愁。《同渡》自疫情後,婆婆已兩年沒回廈門,阿燕每天都要在家照顧婆婆,兩人朝夕相對,彷彿同坐一條船,在湧動的風浪中分享著各種或正或負的情緒。《阿才》阿才因一件垃圾而被分手,又因老板交托處理的一件垃圾而被折磨了一天,才發現曾經到處可見的垃圾桶在社會上無影無蹤。連一個垃圾桶都容不下的香港,還是曾經熟悉的香港嗎?《第一封信》導演 James的好友阿 Man 無奈入獄,他想透過書信開解困在牆內受苦的好友。然而,自己在牆外的心靈自由也被無形的枷鎖栓住,牆外牆內或許都是個困局。《四月的變奏》美容師菀珊在疫情停業期間與多年前的友人重聚,填補了菀珊無可適從的孤獨感。但在互相了解彼此早年間的生活時,珊有感兩人的經歷不同,離港後歸來的友人對香港過去幾年發生的種種有著她不能理解的抽離,最終珊在情感及理性的掙扎下作出了選擇。
Details: hksi.ubc.ca/events/event/screening-conversation-keep-rolling
This screening+conversation is organized by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative in partnership with Ying E Chi, and generously co-sponsored by: Department of Asian Studies, Department of History, Centre for Chinese Research, Department of Theatre and Film, Public Humanities Hub, and the School of Social Work.
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Workshop
State of Hong Kong Studies
9 – 11 June 2023
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Hybrid format
The workshop aims to take stock of the state of the field of “Hong Kong studies” and to help stimulate further research. Interested participants are kindly invited to submit an abstract (~350 words), five keywords, and a one-paragraph biographical sketch (to be combined in 1 PDF file named in the format: “[family name]-[given name]-workshop-abstract”) to hkworkshop.ubc@gmail.com by 15 November 2022.
Please kindly use “State of Hong Kong Studies: Abstract” for the subject line in your email, and please be sure to indicate in your abstract the cluster(s) (you may choose more than one) under which you would like your paper to be considered. Note also that we particularly appreciate contributions that would explicitly address the state of a particular subfield (broadly understood) in Hong Kong studies.
This webinar is organized by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative and sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies.
Details: hksi.ubc.ca/workshop2023/
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Book Talk
Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842 –1997)
Thursday, 3 November 2022, 16:30 –18:00 HKT
Dr. Michael Ng, University of Hong Kong
// Drawing on archival materials, the speaker challenges the widely accepted narrative that freedom of expression in Hong Kong is a legacy of British rule of law. Demonstrating that the media and schools were pervasively censored for much of the colonial period and only liberated at a very late stage of British rule, this book complicates our understanding of how Hong Kong came to be a city that championed free speech by the late 1990s. //
This book talk is organized by the Hong Kong Research Hub of the Nanyang Technological University.
Details: www.ntu.edu.sg/soh/news-events/events/detail/2022/11/03/research-events/book-talk-political-censorship-in-british-hong-kong-freedom-of-express-and-the-law-(1842-1997)-cambridge-university-press
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Symposium
The Changing Contours of Hong Kong’s Civil Society
Friday, 4 November 2022, 16:00 PT
Via Zoom
// A panel of experts will discuss how Hong Kong’s civil society organizations, mass media, and the diaspora have adapted and transformed in the wake of the National Security Law. //
This symposium is organized by Global Hong Kong Studies at the University of California.
Details: www.globalhks-uc.org/the-changing-contours-of-hong-kongs-civil-society
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Book Talks
Hong Kong Visual Culture: The M+ Guide by Tina Pang
Friday, 4 November 2022, in person
英國檔案中的香港前途問題by Gary Cheung
Friday, 18 November 2022, in person
Building Colonial Hong Kong, Speculative Development and Segregation in the City by Cecilia L. Chu
Friday, 25 November 2022, hybrid
This book talk series is organized by the Society for Hong Kong Studies.
Details: hkstudies.org/events/book-talk-series-new-directions-in-hk-studies/
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Oct 7: Dr. Samson Yuen examined community activism beyond the realm of street politics in Hong Kong [ webcast | photos ]
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Oct 25: A full house of audience attended the Vancouver premiere of Far Far Away 緣路山旮旯 at UBC. The screening was joined by director Amos Why and the post-screening conversation was moderated by HKSI convenor Dr. Helena Wu [ photos ]
For a complete list of our video recordings, please visit our YouTube channel or the “ Video Library" section of our website.
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Please kindly consider a tax-deductible donation to HKSI (hksi.ubc.ca/support-us). Thank you, as always, for your support of the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative.
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