Panelists




RichardPena

Richard Peña

Richard Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988.

At the Film Society, Richard Peña has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami,  Robert Aldrich, Roberto Gavaldon, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Carlos Saura and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Israeli, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Swedish, Taiwanese and Argentine cinema.

He is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and from 2006-2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of WNET/Channel 13’s weekly Reel 13.

JeanGains_starr

Jane Gaines

Jane Gaines is Professor of Film, Columbia University, New York. Previously, she founded and directed the Program in Film/Video/Digital at Duke University.

She has won national awards for two books: Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law and Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era, and published articles on intellectual property and early piracy as well as documentary film and video, co-editing Collecting Visible Evidence.

Currently she is completing Fictioning Histories: Women Film Pioneers, a project for which she received an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences scholar award.

WeihongBao

Weihong Bao

Weihong Bao is Assistant Professor of Chinese cinema and Media Culture at Columbia University.

She has recently completed her book manuscript entitled "Dances of Fire: Aesthetic Affect and the Intermediation of Chinese Cinema, 1884-1945."

Her writings appear in such journals as Camera Obscura, 19th Century Theatre and Film, Opera Quarterly, The Journal of Modern Chinese Literature, and The Journal of Chinese Cinemas.

JeffreyJohnson

Jeffrey Johnson

Jeffrey Johnson is the founding director of China <megacities>Lab, an experimental research unit at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, at Columbia University, where he also teaches. He is also a co-founding principal of SLAB architecture based in New York City.

Johnson’s research at China <megacities> Lab focuses on China's rapid urbanization over the past 30 years. Current projects include research on China’s large-scale superblock development, which will be included as part of a book he is co-editing on the subject provisionally entitled The China Lab Guide to Megablock Urbanisms, and on the exportation and influence of Chinese urbanism and design through China’s global expansion.

Johnson has lectured extensively in both China and the United States, organizes collaborative international China <megacities> Lab/Columbia University design studios and workshops in China, and has organized and participated in a number of international forums and exhibitions. Johnson is an executive curator for this year’s Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

YingjinZhang

Yingjin Zhang

Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at University of California, San Diego.

His English books include The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (1996), Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (1998), China in a Polycentric World (1998), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai (1999), Screening China (2002), Chinese National Cinema (2004), From Underground to Independent (2006), Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010), Chinese Film Stars (2010), and A Companion to Chinese Cinema (Blackwell, 2012).

Zhang Zhen

Zhang Zhen is an associate professor in Cinema Studies and History at New York University. 

Her publications include An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1895-1937 (2005; MLA “Honorary Mention for an Outstanding First Book”) and The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (2007).  She is currently working on a new book on the melodramatic articulations in Chinese-language film history and two co-edited volumes, Screening Trans-Asia and DV-Made China.

Zhang Zhen is also a widely published poet and essayist.

XiheChen

Dr. Xihe Chen

Dr. Xihe Chen graduated from Southwest China Normal University with a bachelor degree, The Arts Academy of China with a master degree and The Ohio State University with a Ph.D. degree, Xihe Chen served as a research fellow and deputy director at Research Department of China Film Research Center (Beijing) in 1980’s, and now is a professor and deputy dean at School of Film and TV Art and Technology, Shanghai University.

His recent papers and books include “Chinese Experiences in the Films of Mainland, and Hong Kong” (2001), “Aesthetics and Political Economy of Chinese Cinema” (2003), “On Xie Jin’s Films” (2004), Film and TV in Cross-cultural Context (2002), Film and TV Criticism: Theory and Practice (2003), Chinese Language Cinema: Theory, History and Aesthetics (2010). He also has publication in English: “Shadowplay (Ying-Xi): Chinese Film Aesthetics and Their Philosophical and Cultural Fundamentals” (1990), “Red Theories, Blue Theories, and Beyond” (2004), and Film in Contemporary : 1979-1989 (ed. 1993).

LaikwanPan

Laikwan Pang

Laikwan Pang is a professor in the Department of Cultural and  Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

She is the author of Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-wing Cinema  Movement, 1932-37 (Rowman and Littlefield 2002), Cultural Control and  Globalization in Asia: Copyright, Piracy, and Cinema (Routledge,  2006), The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (University of  Hawaii Press, 2007), as well as Creativity and Its Discontents:  China's Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Right Offense (Duke University Press, forthcoming).

WangHui

Wang Hui

Mr. WANG Hui is a founding partner of URBANUS. He is an architect licensed in New York State. Mr. Wang received his Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture degrees from Tsinghua University, and a Master of Architecture degree from Miami University. Prior to establishing URBANUS, Mr. Wang taught at the Central Academy of Arts and Design in China, and was a project architect in Gruzen Samton Architects, Gensler, and Gary Edward Handel + Associates in New York City. In 1999, Mr. Wang co-founded URBANUS with his partners LIU Xiaodu and MENG Yan. Mr. Wang has been invited to lecture by both domestic and international academic institutions.