History in Images, History in Words: In Search of Facts in Documentary Filmmaking


History in Images, History in Words: 
In Search of Facts 
in Documentary Filmmaking

A lecture by Carma Hinton

Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University

Monday April 10, 2017 from 4-7 pm

at the Photonics Center (9th fl.), 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston University

17_4_10 Carma_semifinal as of 3.20.17 1038amMy 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.

Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon 1989

9/8/25 The Enduring Legacies of WWII in East Asia: Reflections 80 Years Later (at Harvard)

By remurowSeptember 8th, 2025in 01: Events, 01: Past Events

September 8 - 21, 2025

FAIRBANK CENTER 
SPECIAL PRESENTATION 
The Enduring Legacies of World War II in East Asia:  Reflections 80 Years LaterMonday, September 8, 2025 | 12:00 - 1:15 PM EDT
Belfer Case Study Room (S020) | CGIS South | 1730 Cambridge St. | Cambridge, MASpeakers:
Thomas Berger, Professor of International Relations, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
Mark Caprio, Professor Emeritus, Rikkyo University, Tokyo; Kim Koo Visiting Professor of Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy SchoolModerator: Christina Davis, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Department of Government and Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard UniversityThe 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War marks a significant occasion for critical reflections on its legacies in East Asia. China and Taiwan and the two Koreas are still divided and remain major flashpoints with security and political tensions. In the aftermath of WWII, Japan emerged as a peaceful state, but its imperial and war legacies have been politically contested. In China, growing pride and nationalism are driving public discourse about WWII. Leaders in South Korea and Japan, in the context of China’s rise and the second Trump administration, have been rethinking their global role and seeking more bilateral cooperation. Our distinguished panel of historians and political scientists will examine how the legacies of WWII still shape the global order among China, South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. today.Co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Korea Institute, Harvard University Asia Center, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs’ Program on US-Japan Relations

9-18-25 – Development, Dispossession, and Desires in Jeju with Youjeong Oh

By Maria Elena P. Rivera-BeckstromAugust 1st, 2025in 01: Events, 01: Past Events


Thursday, September 18, 2025
4pm-5:30pm
75 Bay State Road, Boston MA

Please register here.

Jeju is known as a popular international tourist destination, a filming location for K-dramas, an Instagrammable hotspot, and a site of trendy lifestyle experiments. Yet behind these images of paradise, pristine nature, and healing lie histories of forced development and dispossession. Highlighting diverse forms of activism, this presentation conveys the vivid and urgent voices of Jeju residents as they resist the extractive, predatory, and colonial dimensions of development.

Youjeong Oh is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book, Pop City: Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place (Cornell, 2018), explores how Korean municipalities have used Korean TV dramas and K-pop music in their placeand tourism promotion. Her current research is about (over)development, dispossession, and desires in Jeju. Her other research interests include urban social movements, colonization through development, decolonization, indigenous resurgence, and media, tourism, and place in East Asia. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Tourism Geographies, Media, Culture & Society, and the Journal of Korean Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley. (From AAS NEAC DSB Korea website.)

This talk is presented to you by the BU Center for the Study of Asia, BU Initiative on Cities, and CAS World Languages and Literatures Department with financial assistance from the Korea Foundation through the Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council Distinguished Speakers Bureau-Korea grant.

 

 

9-22-2025 – Taiwanese Politics and US-China-Taiwan Relations Under Trump 2.0 with S. Philip Hsu

By Maria Elena P. Rivera-BeckstromJuly 31st, 2025in 01: Events, 01: Past Events

 

Monday, September 22, 2025
5PM - 6:30 PM
BU Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering
Rm. 101, 610 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215

Please register here.

 

The talk will examine the following aspects  of the U.S.-Taiwan-China relations: 1. how the Taiwan society views the U.S. and China, and the main developments in Taiwan’s party politics/democratic governance since President Lai was inaugurated in 2024; 2. the implications of U.S. foreign policy under Trump 2.0 for the trilateral relations; and 3. the implications of China’s policies toward the U.S. and Taiwan for the trilateral relations.  

 

Philip Hsu holds dual appointments currently as Professor at the Department of Political Science and Professor at the School of Political Science and Economics, National Taiwan University. He is also Executive Director of Center for China Studies, College of Social Sciences, NTU. During July 2022~January 2023, he was a visiting fellow at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies of Brookings Institution, and a Fulbright scholar. He was president of the Chinese Association of Political Science (Taipei), and is now on the supervisory boards of the Chinese Association of Political Science (Taipei) and the R.O.C. Association of International Relations.  He obtained his doctoral degree from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, USA.  He was on the Advisory Committee under the Sea Exchange Foundation, and the Advisory Committee under Mainland Affairs Council, Executive Yuan, Taiwan.  Professor Hsu’s research interests include comparative politics (with particular emphasis on the People’s Republic of China), political economy, and international relations (with particular emphasis on Asia-Pacific international security and economic cooperation).  His articles have been published in The Pacific Review, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Journal of Contemporary China, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Issues & Studies, Journal of Chinese Governance, etc.  He is also a co-editor of twelve edited volumes published in Taiwan, China, and the English-speaking world, such as In Search of China’s Development Model: Beyond the Beijing Consensus (co-edited with Yu-Shan Wu and Suisheng Zhao) (New York: Routledge, 2011), and Minzhu, Minzhuhua, and Zhili Jixiao (Democracy, Democratization and Governance Performance) (with Yu Xunda)(Hangzhou, China: Zhejiang University Press, 2011).

 

9-29-25 – An Infirm Ascendancy? India’s National Security Challenges with Ashley Tellis

By Maria Elena P. Rivera-BeckstromJuly 31st, 2025in 01: Events, 01: Past Events

Monday, September 29, 2025
1 PM - 2:30 PM
121 Bay State Road, Boston MA

Please register here. 

 

Despite India's success in accumulating power in recent decades, durable security has proved to be elusive. India faces significant challenges both within the country and along its diverse frontiers, leaving the question of how much influence it will exert in the international system still open. This lecture will explore the structural and transient factors in India’s security environment with an eye to understanding whether India can rise successfully.

 

Ashley J. Tellis holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy with a special focus on Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

 

 

 

Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp

By Maria Elena P. Rivera-BeckstromJuly 30th, 2025in 01: Events, 01: Featured Events

October 29, 2025
5:00 - 6:30 PM
Boston University College of General Studies
871 Commonwealth Ave, Room 511

Please register here.

Join us for a talk with award-winning Jewish American writer Tracy Slater about her new book, Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp (Chicago Review Press 2025). The evening will include a reading, discussion, and book signing. Please register in advance.

This event is sponsored by the BU College of General Studies, the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, and the BU Center for the Study of Asia at the Pardee School.

Tracy Slater is a Jewish American writer from Boston, based in her husband's country of Japan. Her latest book is a work of narrative history titled Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp (Chicago Review Press 2025), named a Jewish Book Council Recommended Summer Read and featured by NPR Morning Edition. Her previous book was the mixed-marriage memoir The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World (G.P. Putnam's Sons 2015). It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and one of PopSugar's best books of 2015, among other accolades. Slater has published work in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Time magazine's Made by History, and more. She taught writing for over ten years in Boston-area universities and in men's and women's prisons throughout Massachusetts. She is the recipient of PEN New England's Friend to Writers Award and holds a PhD in English and American literature from Brandeis University.

10-01-2025 – The Contested Meaning of Symbolic Spaces in Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Shanghai

By Maria Elena P. Rivera-BeckstromJuly 29th, 2025in 01: Events, 01: Past Events

Wednesday, October 1, 2025
5 PM - 6:30PM
121 Bay State Road, Boston MA

Please register here.

This roundtable moderated by Robert Weller will bring together discussion of the parks, squares, monuments, and other symbolically important parts of three urban centers. The participants will discuss notable struggles to define the meaning and control the use of key spots within the metropolis they know best. The discussion will move from Bangkok and Hong Kong, where Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal and Hana Meihan Davis spent their formative years, to Shanghai, the city that Jeffrey Wasserstrom began his career studying.

 

Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal is an author, activist, translator, founder of a publishing house, and the co-producer of The Last Breath of Sam Yan, a documentary film about a Bangkok shrine that won a major prize in Thailand. He has just begun a graduate program at the Harvard Divinity School.

 


Hana Meihan Davis is the author of For the Love of Hong Kong: A Memoir from my City Under Siege, which was published in 2021. A graduate of Yale and a past editorial intern at and contributor to the Washington Post and the South China Morning Post, she is currently in graduate school at MIT pursuing a master's in architecture. 

 


Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a Distinguished Professor of History at UC Irvine. His books include Global Shanghai,1850-2010, which came out in 2009, and The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia's Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing, which was published earlier this year.

 


Robert Weller is a Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. His books include, as author, Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen, which was published in 1994, and, as co-editor, It Happens Among People: Resonances and Extensions of the Work of  Fredrik Barth, which came out in 2020.

10-29-25 – Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp

By Maria Elena P. Rivera-BeckstromJuly 28th, 2025in 01: Events, 01: Featured Events

October 29, 2025
5:00 - 6:30 PM
871 Commonwealth Ave, Room 511

Please register here.

Join us for a talk with award-winning Jewish American writer Tracy Slater about her new book, Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp (Chicago Review Press 2025). The evening will include a reading, discussion, and book signing. Please register in advance.

This event is sponsored by the BU College of General Studies, the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, and the BU Center for the Study of Asia at the Pardee School.

Tracy Slater is a Jewish American writer from Boston, based in her husband's country of Japan. Her latest book is a work of narrative history titled Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp (Chicago Review Press 2025), named a Jewish Book Council Recommended Summer Read and featured by NPR Morning Edition. Her previous book was the mixed-marriage memoir The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World (G.P. Putnam's Sons 2015). It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and one of PopSugar's best books of 2015, among other accolades. Slater has published work in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Time magazine's Made by History, and more. She taught writing for over ten years in Boston-area universities and in men's and women's prisons throughout Massachusetts. She is the recipient of PEN New England's Friend to Writers Award and holds a PhD in English and American literature from Brandeis University.