Post 2 - BAMPFA - Maxwell Alldread, Elen Chakhoyan, Monet Khanyahl, Tina Lin
For our project we decided to look further into something that wasn't too far away from us, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) was founded in 1963 according to Gladys Rosario for the Daily Californian in an article titled “Construction Begins on UC Berkeley Art Museum”. However, BAMPFA has not always had its futuristic look. The plans for this new look has been in the works since 1997 when it was found that the old building was not up to seismic standards. But just like then, the BAMPFA has been home to many different arts spanning a wide variety of time and cultures.
For our project we wanted to focus on BAMPFA because of the rich connection it has to Chinese cinema. BAMPFA began it’s screenings in 1979 and since then they’ve been able to have many different screening events that are connected to Chinese cinema such as Chinese Film Week, Chinese Cinema: Rediscovered, and Asian-American International Film Festival. Besides these screenings they also have other material connected to Chinese cinema culture such as catalogs, flyers, and newspaper articles from other Chinese theaters around the Bay Area. BAMPFA has been able to provide many screenings to the community that show the beauty, complexity, and necessity showcasing many different experiences within the world. They further this by having some directors come in and talk about their experiences creating films or the things that had inspired them to create.
To further the reach of Chinese cinema within the Bay Area, BAMPFA has been able to team up with a few organizations to showcase films. An example of this would be the Chinese Cultural Foundation in San Francisco or the organization Cinema of Blazing Passion, however we had found that many of these usually happened within the 90s. There are a few exceptions of course, one of them being that they were able to present films in the San Francisco International Film Festival and the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival in 2013.
An interesting thing about BAMPFA is that because it is not just a place for film screenings, they are able to correlate art exhibits with screenings, some of them even relating to Chinese cinema. One of them being Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Paintings being related to the film screening collection Beauty and Sacrifice: Images of Women in Chinese Cinema. The screenings were curated by Susan Oxtoby with help from Sun Xianghui and Zhao Jing, China Film Archive; Noah Cowan and Samuel La France, TIFF Cinematheque; and Weihong Bao, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley. The screenings set out with the goal of portraying women, their desires, and their sacrifices. The four films within this series were Cecile Tang Shu Shuen's rare The Arch (1969), Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000) ,Wu Yonggang’s The Goddess (1934), Cai Chusheng’s New Women (1935), and Ruan Lingyu’s Center Stage (1922). Although screened back in 2013, many of these films are still available for viewing upon request. By using the resources at hand, students can access these films through a simple search on the UC Berkeley Library.
To speak briefly on one of the films, In the Mood for Love follows an affair where the two slowly fall in love with each other and is hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. What makes many of director Wong’s films unforgettable is the focus on intimacy, memories and the reflectivity of time. His other film, Happy Together (1997), is a prime example of said intimacy as it follows the tumultuous relationship of two gay men. The BAMPFA is a wonderful opportunity as these films span from the 1930s to the 2010s and in this time span, the physical film celluloid deteriorates; so by restoring and digitizing sad films, BAMFA is a rare site viewers can access these works.
Another film series BAMPHA presented was the Paul Kendel Fonoroff Collection at the C. V. Starr East Asian Library at UC Berkeley on September 30, 2017. Anyone in the Bay Area interested in the history of Chinese cinema now had an extraordinary treasure at their fingertips.
The Paul Kendel Fonoroff Collection represents the largest and most comprehensive Chinese film studies collection in North America, with more than seventy thousand periodicals, posters, photographs, and ephemeral objects. A selection of posters from the Fonoroff Collection was available to view at BAMPFA during the fall 2017 semester. BAMPFA also showcased seven rare films imported from the China Film Archive that were produced during what has been called the “Second Golden Age” of Chinese cinema, a fertile moment preceding the cultural and aesthetic changes that would come as a result of the Chinese Communist Revolution in October 1949. A few of these films being Xu Changlin’s Suspicion (1948), Tan Youliu’s Quest for a Long-Lost Husband (1950), and Sang Hu’s Long Live the Missus (1947) The filmmaking of this period was international in character, embracing diverse styles and genres; epics, melodramas, romances, psychological thrillers, and revealing the connection of Chinese film production of the time to trends in the West.
BAMPFA’s film series connected to an international film conference, Shadow History: Archive and Intermediality in Chinese Cinema, organized by UC Berkeley’s Center for Chinese Studies. BAMPFA welcomed scholars, film archivists, and specialists in Chinese cinema, including film historian and collector Paul Fonoroff, who presented a keynote introduction to one of his favorites: the 1947 classic Long Live the Missus, a standout for its presentation of a strikingly modern China.
With this research we were able to step deeper into the beauty of BAMPFA and the work they’re doing for the community. Being able to further the reach of Chinese cinema is important in showing a culture that many may not have thought they would be able to relate to. With the research we also left with more questions. One of the things that we are looking forward to is trying to get in touch with people who have been able to curate these films. We want to try and understand how they’re able to get ahold of these films and the ideas that they have while going through these films and trying to find films they think people will want to come out and see. We believe that being able to speak to a curator will give a further insight into how BAMPFA is able to showcase these films and what they are trying to show about the culture surrounding them.
This is a great dive into the PFA and its previous programs and screenings. The recent history is well-laid out and very informative, and it's so fun to read. I wonder if your group would be able to visit the PFA study center and view some materials from some of these previous programs? Please also check out the cinefiles website and see what kind of primary documents you can find from a lot of historical profeams at the PFA. You may also want to contact Jianye He and Deborah Rudolph at EAL to see some of the Paul K Fonoroff Collection, and I think they'll be very happy to show you the pieces that were exhibited during the Chinese Cinema programs at PFA from a few years ago. If you're interested in interviewing a curator at PFA or professor here at Berkeley, you may want to contact Susan Oxtoby and Weihong Bao. Let me know if you need any assistance!
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