Film Screening with Director Evans Chan: Chinatopia / Two or Three Things about Kang Youwei

The film explores the life of Chinese politician and utopian thinker Kang Youwei (1858–1927) that touches on a wide variety of issues such as transnationalism, immigration, and Chinese history.

The 72-minute film is in English (no Finnish subtitles) and is followed by discussion and Q & A with the director. The event is organized by TaRC (Tampere Research Coalition for Russian and Chinese Media) at Tampere University.

Kang Youwei (aka Kang Yu-wei, 1858–1927), was a major calligrapher, prominent political thinker, philosopher and reformer of China's last dynasty, the late Qing Dynasty. He has been hailed as the first modern Chinese and China's greatest modern philosopher.

A household name in China, he is famous mainly for engineering a political movement, known as the Hundred Days' Reform, in 1898 that was supported by the receptive Emperor Guangxu but loathed by Empress Dowager Cixi, who crushed it.

Evans Chan is considered “one of the most singularly innovative and diverse figures in the Chinese cultural world [in the past 15 years]” (Michael Berry). This New York-based critic, playwright and filmmaker has made four narrative features and five documentaries.

Chan's award-winning films have been shown at the Berlin, Rotterdam, London, Moscow, Montreal, and Taiwan Golden Horse film festivals, among others. His latest films Raise the Umbrellas (2018) and We Have Boots (2020) are about the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement and its aftermath.

An anthology about his films, Postcolonialism, Diaspora, and Alternative Histories: The Cinema of Evans Chan (edited by Tony Williams), was published by Hong Kong University Press in 2015.

More on Chan’s films on Kang Youwei: http://www.evanschan.com/Datong/html/MainFrameset.html