Group Introductions

Hello class!

       A major aspect of a group project is the people within it. Tina is a junior currently studying cognitive science. Monet is a junior transfer double majoring in media studies and film studies which she hopes will continue her filmmaking career. Elen is a junior transfer who originally went to College of Canyons before landing here at UC Berkeley to study Media studies. Max is a junior that is interested in the videography industry, he feels a deep connection to this project not only because he is half Chinese but also his love of cinema. 

Because we are such a diverse group of people interested in different things we are able to use this to our advantage in the roles we potentially want to do within this project. Tina has said that she wants to focus more on presentations and research, Elen has also discussed an interest in the research side of this project and also focusing on writing. Monet also has an interest in writing and also using photography to further this project, a concept that Max also wants to focus on, along with research within Chinese Cinema. 

While looking at what we wanted to research we had a few ideas on the possible avenues that we wanted to explore. One of these being BAMPFA that is just walking distance away from the campus. We like the idea of focusing on BAMPFA because of how rich the archive is of Chinese cinema. BAMPFA is known for the wide variety of international films they showcase, we believe that this archive can be helpful in truly understanding the complexities and beauty of Chinese cinema. Another area we were interested in is a physical movie theater. With this option we thought about the bounds of knowledge we could acquire by just talking to the owners of the theater or the community surrounding it. We would be able to find out how this theater impacts its community and how the community impacts the theater. One limitation of this would be that many theaters do not have a whole archive readily available for us to research through. Another place our project could potentially research is the San Francisco International Film Festival that is considered a major cultural event which has a rich history of screening Chinese films, even having a Hong Kong cinema film series in 2020. We thought we could potentially talk to the people in charge of the festival and get more information about the motivations behind this festival and the future for it also. 

When dealing with the research for this project we thought that our main sources will be found within the libraries. Within the libraries we will be able to answer any questions that we have and also produce more questions that can further our research. We want to split up the research for individual people and come back together and talk about our findings and how we can use it within the project to further show the beauty of Chinese cinema. 

We are excited for where this research project will take us and how our ideas on this subject will change. Thank you for reading and we look forward to showing the class what we’ve found. 

Tina Lin

Monet Khanyahl

Elen Chakhoyan

Maxwell Alldread