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October 5-December 7: AsiaLENS Documentary Film Series in Urbana, IL

AEMS Documentary and Independent Film Series
at the Spurlock Museum

AsiaLENS is a series of free public film screenings and lecture / discussion programs—organized by AEMS in collaboration with the Spurlock Museum—presenting recent documentary films on issues reflecting contemporary life in Asia.

Local and visiting experts introduce the films and lead audiences in post-screening discussions.

All AsiaLENS screenings are FREE and open to the public every first Tuesday of the month during Fall and Spring semesters at the University of Illinois.

The Spurlock Museum is located at 600 S. Gregory Street, Urbana, IL.

AsiaLENS Fall 2010 Calendar:

1428
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
7:00 pm
Spurlock Museum
Awarded as the Best Documentary at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival, 1428 is a stunning exploration of the 8.0 earthquake that shook China’s Sichuan province in 2008, causing 70,000 deaths and 375,000 casualties. Directed by Du Haibin, 1428 goes beyond the filtered official visits portrayed in mainstream media, documenting the aftermath some seven months after the Great Sichuan Earthquake took place at exactly 14:28 on May 12, 2008. While villagers are preparing for the Lunar New Year, and promises made for housing everyone through the winter seem tough to keep, a never-ending parade of tourists arrive with New Year‘s Day, buying DVDs of the most horrific scenes, souvenir albums of corpses being pulled out of the ruins, and photo-taking in front of Beichuan, the town most severely hit, where tens of thousands of people perished in seconds.

Unmistaken Child
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
7:00 pm
Spurlock Museum
Unmistaken Child follows a Tibetan monk’s unforgettable four-year search for the reincarnation of his beloved teacher, Geshe Lama Konchog, a world-renowned Tibetan master who passed away in 2001 at age 84. A devoted disciple since the age of 7, Tenzin Zopa studied with and escorted Lama Konchog on all of his worldwide teachings and activities. Following Lama Konchog’s death, Tenzin is charged by the Dalai Lama to search for his master’s reincarnation, which leads to a remarkable quest on foot, mule and even helicopter, through breathtaking landscapes and remote traditional Tibetan villages. Along the way, Tenzin listens to stories about young children with special characteristics, and performs rarely seen ritualistic tests designed to determine the likelihood of reincarnation.
In Unmistaken Child, Israeli director Nati Baratz presents a stunningly shot film which offers a rare glimpse into the Buddhist concept of reincarnation in practice.

Burma VJ
December 7, 2010
7:00 pm
Spurlock Museum
Courageous young citizens of Burma risk torture and life in jail to keep the flow of news open from their closed country by smuggling reportages made on small handycams out of the country, which are then broadcast back into Burma via satellite and made available for free usage to the international media. While these Burma VJs have successfully released single event clips to international audiences, Danish filmmaker Anders Østergaard is the first to succeed in compiling their individual images to at once tell a much bigger story. Burma VJ offers unique insight into high-risk journalism and dissidence in a police state, while at the same time providing a thorough documentation of the historical and dramatic days of September 2007, when Buddhist monks led a massive, but peaceful rebellion against the military regime. In following the story of a 27-year old video journalist named “Joshua”, we get a first-hand look at the extreme effort and sacrifice it took to report the events that led to more than 100,000 people taking to the streets in protest of a cruel dictatorship that has held the country hostage for more than 40 years.

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