Please join the Film and Media Studies Program at the School of the Arts, C.V. Starr East Asian Library/Dragon Summit Culture Endowment Fund, the Dean of Humanities, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Donald Keene Center for Japanese Culture, The Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies, the Incite Institute/Columbia Center for the Study of Social Difference, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the “Sites of Cinema” University Seminars, The Society of Fellows & Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute for the conference “MoMentum: Mobilization & East Asian Documentary in Trans-Pacific Context.”
Focus is on social change in historical moments that resonate in the present from a comparative international perspective. Events set up dialogue across cultures around political questions: how documentary making was historically aligned with movements for independence, agitation for change, citizen revolt, labor reform, and immigrant struggle. Conference participants rethink the discourse around documentary non-fiction in widest circulation starting from the premise that documentary moving image-making developed worldwide in “times of crisis”: 1920s Soviet agit-prop in revolutionary Russia, 1930s US Depression-era documentary, pre and post-World War II Japan, and post-Bandung Afro-Asian cinematic networks. But what about the new social justice crises we face and how are makers strategizing as a consequence? Finally, why the “recourse” to documentary in mobilizing communities—then, via the new technology of motion picture film—now, via iphone video uploads?
Conference Program
10-10:15am: Welcome
Sarah Cole, Dean of the School of the Arts, Columbia University
10:15 – 11:15am | Panel 1: Internationalism and Solidarity
Moderator: Lydia Liu (Columbia University)
- Jane Gaines (Columbia University), “Historical Temporalities of Struggle: Workers International Relief. New York/Moscow/Tokyo”
- Elliot Gong (Columbia University), “Translating the ‘Bandung Spirit’: Beijing’s Asian Film Week, 1957”
- Markus Nornes (University of Michigan)
11:15 – 11:30am | Discussion
11:30am – 12:30pm | Panel 2: Radical Documentary: The Soviets & Vertov to Today
Moderator: Anastasia Kostina (Columbia University)
- Jim Hoberman (Columbia University)
- Yilun Li (Columbia University
- David Fresko (Rutgers University)
12:30 – 12:45pm | Discussion
12:45 – 2:00pm | Lunch
The Lantern, 8th Floor, Lenfest Center for the Arts
2:00 – 2:45pm | Panel 3: The Politics of Chinese Documentary Today
Moderator: Charles Musser (Yale University)
- Feng Bao (Northeast Normal University), “Filming Chinese Working-Class Precarity: Yu Tuangyi’s Documentary Tetralogy,”
- Chi Wang (Sichuan Film and Television University), “Making Politicality Legible in Contemporary Chinese Documentary”
2:45 – 3:00pm | Discussion
3:00 – 3:20pm | Still Photography Presentation
- Franz Prichard (Florida State University)
3:20 – 5:00pm | Roundtable 1: Connections & Communities: Documentary in East Asia and Beyond
Moderator: Takuya Tsunoda (Columbia University)
- Ying Qian (Columbia University)
- Jason McGrath (University of Minnesota)
- Akiyama Tamako (Kanagawa University/NYU)
- Markus Nornes (University of Michigan)
- Franz Prichard (Florida State University)
5:00 – 5:15pm | Discussion
5:30 – 6:45pm | Reception
The Lantern, 8th Floor, Lenfest Center for the Arts
7:00 – 8:00pm | Screening: Chinese Diaspora Women Workers (38 min. total)
Introduction: Kaitlin Hao (Columbia University)
- “Sewing Woman” (dir. Arthur Dong, 1982), 14 min.
- “Blue Sun Palace” (dir. Constance Tsang, 2024), 15 min. clip
- Work-in-progress documentary short about migrant massage workers (dir. Taylor Hom, 2026), 24 min.
8:00 – 9:30pm | Roundtable 2: Organizing Around Labor and Immigration Issues
Moderator: Zhen Zhang (New York University)
- Kaitlin Hao (Columbia University)
- Constance Tsang (writer/director, “Blue Sun Palace,” 2024)
- Taylor Hom (director/producer, work-in-progress, 2026)
- Two massage workers
- Translators: Mandarin & Korean
