History in Images, History in Words: In Search of Facts in Documentary Filmmaking
A lecture by Carma Hinton
DATE: Monday April 10, 2017 from 4-7 pm
LOCATION: Photonics Center (9th fl.), 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston University
Sponsored by the BU Pardee School of Global Studies Center for the Study of Asia
As part of the BUCSA series, “The Challenge of Documenting China: The Films of Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon”
Abstract:
My presentation will focus on the process of documentary filmmaking, especially the many challenges my team and I faced in trying to create engaging filmic narratives that are both factually accurate and encompass multiple perspectives. I will use excerpts from my films as well as out-takes to illustrate the difficulties in determining what information to include and exclude, assess the compromises involved in the choices, and explore the consequences of taking various possible paths. I will also address the different problems that a historian encounters when presenting history in images as opposed to in words: the potential and limitation of each medium and what information each might privilege or obscure. I believe that in this age of “alternative facts” and “parallel universes,” reflections on the challenges in obtaining authenticity and truth and the importance of relentlessly striving to reach this goal, take on particularly urgent meaning.
About the speaker:
Carma Hinton is an art historian and a filmmaker. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University and is now Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University. Together with Richard Gordon, Hinton has directed many documentary films, including Small Happiness, All Under Heaven, To Taste a Hundred Herbs, Abode of Illusion: The Life and Art of Chang Dai-chien, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, and Morning Sun. She has won two Peabody Awards, the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award, the International Critics Prize and the Best Social and Political Documentary at the Banff Television Festival, and a National News & Documentary Emmy, among others. Hinton is currently working on a book about Chinese scrolls depicting the theme of demon quelling. Carma Hinton was born in Beijing. Chinese is her first language and culture.
