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THE SPEAKERS, FILMS, & EVENTS

In Fall 2008, CWiC proudly cosponsored “The Supernatural in Southeast Asian Studies,” an international film festival and colloquium featuring award-winning works and filmmakers from Thailand, Viet Nam and Burma. The supernatural films shown during the event vary widely in genre and style; however, all draw upon specific histories of war, colonialism, and displacement as well as the spiritual traditions that mark these regions.

Notable scholars and film directors working in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the U.S. convened in Riverside for this unique event. Lively audiences made up of UCR students, faculty, and local community members participated in public conversations with Asian and Asian American film directors and scholars from Women’s Studies, Film and Media Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, and Religious Studies.

On Friday, October 31, UC Irvine Professor Bliss Cua Lim (Film & Media Studies) captivated the audience with her keynote, “The Fantastic as Temporal Translation: The Aswang and Occult National Times.” Presenting a fascinating excerpt from her forthcoming book Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique (Duke University Press: Forthcoming, 2009), Lim explained how supernatural narratives challenge homogenous and linear notions of time by examining representations of the aswang, a folkloric, viscera-sucking female monster, and its re-emergence in Filipino horror films of the 1990s.

Following Lim’s talk, two short films The Story of Spirits (2006) and Buoi Chieu [Afternoon] (2004), directed by Vietnamese American filmmakers Tien Nguyen and Kim Spurlock, respectively, offered emotional and touching explorations of family, separation, death, and the supernatural. On Halloween night, an audience of approximately 100 enjoyed a screening of Nonzee Nimibutr’s Nang Nak [Ghost Wife/Miss Nak] (1999). The legendary blockbuster film was followed by Professor Adam Knee’s animated explication of this famous Thai legend of love beyond the grave and her various reincarnations. On Saturday, Dr. Arnika Fuhrmann and avant-garde Thai filmmaker Pimpaka Towira explored feminist (re)interpretations of the Mae Nak Phra Khanong ghost legend. Following the screening of When the Tenth Month Comes (dir. Dang Nhat Minh, 1984), UCR Professor Lan Duong (Media and Cultural Studies) highlighted issues of nationalism and gender in ghost narratives found in recent Vietnamese films. The final film, Lindsey Merrison’s Friends in High Places: The Art of Survival in Modern-Day Burma (2001), gave Riverside audiences a vivid glimpse of Burmese spirit mediums and highlighted the central role that androgynous male transvestites play in this Southeast Asian supernatural practice. On Sunday, “The Supernatural in Southeast Asian Studies” concluded with a workshop, during which organizers and visiting speakers discussed possibilities for future research collaborations and public events featuring Southeast Asian films and cultural productions.

“The Supernatural in Southeast Asian Studies” was organized by UCR professors Lan Duong (Media and Cultural Studies), Tamara Ho (Women’s Studies), and Justin McDaniel (Religious Studies). The event was co-sponsored by the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program, UCR’s Center for Ideas and Society, Center for Women in Coalition, Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual and Performance (SEATRiP) Program, and the departments of Women’s Studies and Media and Cultural Studies.

For more information about the films and speakers, see seatrip.ucr.edu.

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“Who Said It was Simple.”
- Audre Lorde