Image and Thought: Film-Philosophy as a Possibility
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Time: Friday, July 28, 7:00PM-9:00PM (Beijing)
Location: Columbia Global Centers | Beijing & Online
No. 26, 1F Core Plaza, 1 Shanyuan Street, Zhongguancun, Haidian District
Event language: Chinese
Columbia Global Centers | Beijing is pleased to invite you to the event, "Image and Thought: Film-Philosophy as a Possibility," as we invite distinguished scholars from Columbia University and Peking University and award-winning filmmaker to delve into the interactions between film aesthetics and philosophical traditions, recognizing cinema as a site where a great deal of philosophical thinking happens today.
The event is initiated and co-organized by Tenggeer Hao, a Ph.D. candidate of the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures and one of the recipients of the Beijing Center's 2023-2024 Scholar-in-Residence Program.
In this program, the Beijing Center offers Columbia University's faculty, researchers, and doctoral students opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary interaction or research-related programs with their counterparts in China and expand their research, teaching, and learning footprints and international researcher network.
Description
The encounter between philosophy and film is multi-dimensional. Philosophy is often perceived as a set of universal laws, with films as particular examples for illustrating these laws. Sometimes, philosophy takes on a prescriptive nature, legislating for film and regarding it as nothing more than a visualized "mouthpiece." However, the emerging field of "film philosophy" explores a different possibility, proposing that film itself is inherently capable of philosophizing. The very moment of picking up a camera is itself an encounter with time, space, image, and thought. Methodologically, different regions and countries approach the relationship between film and philosophy through diverse conceptual frameworks. Western film theory offers rich theorizations centered around concepts such as time, space, realism, montage, gender, and race, among others, while traditional Chinese philosophy and aesthetics, with concepts like meaning, image, emotion, atmosphere, form, and spirit, also harbor infinite possibilities.
The event will take the film The Cord of Life (2022), directed by Sixue Qiao, as a starting point to encourage intellectual discussions about the interplay between visual imagery and thoughts, as well as reflections on methodology.
Speakers
Ying Qian is an associate professor in Chinese Cinema and Media at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. She is also a core faculty member at Columbia Center for Comparative Media, and a faculty affiliate at Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. She teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses including East Asian cinema, Chinese documentary cinema, Chinese media cultures and the proseminar on comparative media. Her first book, Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in 20th Century China (Columbia University Press, forthcoming in 2023) proposes to study documentary as an “eventful medium,” and uses documentary as a prism to examine the role of media in producing and regulating the epistemological and relational upheavals inherent to radical re-orderings of the society. She’s now working on a new monograph on media and the ecologies of knowledge in China’s era of reform and opening. Her articles have appeared in Critical Inquiry, New Left Review, China Perspectives, Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, New Literary History of Modern China, and other journals and volumes.
Yang Li (Daqihupi) is the vice-dean of the School of Arts of the Peking University, professor as well as film producer. His main research interest is history of European film, film theory and western contemporary art theory. He graduated from the Université de Lille with a doctorate in film studies. He is the senior visiting scholar of the ERASMUS program of the European Community of Colleges. He has hosted and participated in 7 projects supported by the national social science fund and has published more than 40 academic papers in journals such as Wen Yi Yan Jiu, Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, Film Art and etc. He has published numerous books including Les gestes du western de Sergio Leone: pour une introduction a I'analysegestuelle des films, The Ethics of View, Cinephilia: The History of Culture, etc. He is the chief editor of "Cinephilia Series" collection and has translated Cinema (written by Alain Badiou ), Conversations avec Sergio Leone and Abbas Kiarostami: Cahiers du Cinema Livres into Chinese.
Sixue Qiao is a director and screenwriter who graduated from the Institut International de l'Image et du Son (3IS) , France in 2015. Her first film, The Cord of Life (2022), was screen on March 18, 2023. It was nominated for the "Asian Future" award at the Tokyo International Film Festival and won the "Best Technical" award at the Hainan Island International Film Festival , as well as the "Best Film" and "Best Actress" awards at the Trans-Baikal International Film Festival in Russia.
Moderator
Tenggeer Hao is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. His academic interests primarily focus on Chinese film studies, film-philosophy, media theory, and comparative philosophy between China and the West. His dissertation, "Mind Media: Towards a Yin-Yang Philosophy of Media," aims to construct a philosophy of media using concepts from traditional Chinese philosophy and articulate the philosophical foundation of its methodology.
Agenda
- 19:00-19:10 Opening Remarks
- 19:10-19:40 Dialogue between Tenggeer Hao and Qiao Sixue
- 19:40-20:40 Panel Discussion on "Image and Thought: Film-Philosophy as a Possibility"
- 20:40-21:00 Q&A
Reminder
- This is a hybrid event in Chinese.
- Registration is required. You will be notified of the results via your registration email address.
- The film The Cord of Life, which will be discussed during this event, is scheduled for screening on Tuesday, July 25, at 3:30 PM (EST) at Film at Lincoln Center. Kindly consider watching it beforehand to enhance your participation in the event.