Revisiting Indigenous Articulations: A Film Screening and Discussion with Anita Chang

What is at stake in generating and representing Indigenous articulations in Asia and the Pacific? Articulations in this usage encompass both attempts to generate meanings and new connections and relations that cut across the boundaries of nation-states. To help engage with this question, we are delighted to welcome filmmaker, educator, and writer Anita Chang for a screening and discussion of Tongues of Heaven, a collaboratively directed experimental documentary film project that brings together the work of four Indigenous female filmmakers: An-Chi Chen and Shin-Lan Yu from Taiwan and Leivallyn Kainoa Kaupu and Monica Hauʻoli Waiau from Hawai‘i. This film represents in at-times unexpected ways efforts at Indigenous language revitalization, responses to settler colonial education policies, and the impact of extreme climate variability on Indigenous communities. Following the screening, Anita will discuss the film, as well as demo the companion web application named Root Tongue.

Speaker

Anita Chang is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, East Bay.

Anita was born to parents who immigrated to the US from Taiwan in the 1960s, fleeing a dictatorship. Her works have been screened and broadcast internationally, and been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Walker Arts Center, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and National Museum of Women. Her essays have published in positions: asia critique, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, and Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies. Her essay “Altered States for a Critical Cosmopolitanism” was published as part of Routledge’s AFI Film Readers series book, Teaching Transnational Cinema and Media: Politics and Pedagogy.

Sponsors

David See-chai Lam Centre, SFU
Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research, SFU