Group 4 Blog 1
Hello! We are group 4 made up of Cosette Moskowitz, a 5th-year film and cognitive science double major; Jennifer Garcia-Tabarez, a 3rd-year film major and creative writing minor; Miguel Balderrama, a third-year transfer film major; and Eric Wu, a 4th-year economics and data science double major. We are all really excited to get started with this research project and hopefully explore what the libraries have to offer on campus. We are collectively interested in researching a film festival in the bay area and are excited to look into ones with rich Chinese-American or Chinese history. We found the Asian American International Film Festival, which is now in its 45th year, and are excited to dive in and explore this a little deeper as a strong contender for our topic choice. We think it would be interesting to look at past winners of the festival and examine them as hallmarks of what was popular at the time and if those films reflected the sociopolitical climate at the time. What changed over the years? Or are the issues the films were concerned with still prevalent today?
On our first meeting, we discussed time availability and general interests, which let us arrive at the idea of picking a film festival rather than a theater specifically. To start our research, Miguel volunteered to compile a list of the past film festival winners to help us decide which ones we want to focus on and talk about. We have not yet decided how many films we want to pick (ie how broad our time range will be) but we are thinking it would be more relevant to pick a more contemporary period and possibly contrast that with an older period to help examine time period differences and their effects on film. Eric volunteered to do primary source translation which will be super helpful in exploring what the libraries have to offer. Jennifer is going to start looking into finding sources to guide our research, and Cosette will handle the bulk of the blog post writing. We decided to divide up the group research needs, but we are either considering having a rotating author (depending on our schedule restraints) or collectively writing each post as a group.
I really enjoyed reading your first blog post. It was great to learn about your research questions and how you decided to proceed forward as a group. I'm looking forward to reading the future blog posts and learning about your discoveries as you proceed.
ReplyDeleteI suggest that the group focus on specific moments of CAAMfest's history. Cosette and Jennifer noticed that the period of the 1980s, especially from 1986 to 1989, would be a very interesting time period to investigate in the film festival's history, since according to their website, they relied a lot on international films from China and Asia in general. The article we looked at together is from their website, here: https://caamedia.org/history-timeline/
My suggestion is to look at what kind of films CAAM/NAATA was screening from China. Take a look at program guides, flyers, descriptions - is there anything about the way they are advertised that tells you about the festival's relationship with Chinese cinema, or the Bay Area's relationship with films from China at the time? What kinds of thematic titles and groupings were used? Please make sure to incorporate primary sources in at least one of your future blog posts, as that is a requirement of the assignment.
For future blog posts and research, your group may be interested in talking with a CAAMfest representative (we're working on inviting the executive director to our class, so stay tuned); and maybe even visiting the AMC Kabuki Theater in Japantown, due to its special relationship with the festival, as described on the website, to see what more you can learn.
For Blog 2, I recommend you start gathering and describing related secondary academic sources you can find online and in-person using our Berkeley library. Find out what other scholars have written about the history of CAAM or Chinese films being imported into the US around the 1980s (maybe you'll find history from slightly before or slightly after, that's also fine.) I also recommend that each of you use this Google form to help guide your search - we'll use this for class next week. It only takes a few minutes and is very helpful for catalog searches in our library: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe415wuXCkhFuaVH8Ro2ypbGovb29iNwpzcIZSEGRfMQiiZfA/viewform
Other sources on CAAM (or NAATA, as it was previously known):
PFA has some flyers and resources related to CAAM/NAATA, as you can see on slide 16 of Jason's presentation from Week 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10sC8xfad0xpwiThxmqWCOy3gGECzG7UD/view
Try also PFA's cinefiles website and searching through there too to see if they have anything related to NAATA or CAAM: https://cinefiles.bampfa.berkeley.edu/
Ethnic Studies Library has a catalog that you can browse and make appointments to view in person. Try different keywords to search such as NAATA, Chinatown, China, film, cinema, theater, etc.:
http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/asian-american-studies-collection
HIm Mark Lai Finding aids: http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/himmarklai_aasarc2010_findingaid.pdf
http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/himmarklai_aasarc2000_findingaid.pdf
Asian American Vertical files: http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/aasorganizationsnewsletters.pdf
http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/aasnewspaperclippings_subjectfiles_0.pdf
Your group is welcome to set up another meeting to follow-up with me with any questions you may have. Good luck with blog post 2, and have a great weekend!