Description

Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival (Reel Asian) presented by National Bank is a unique showcase of contemporary Asian cinema and work from the Asian diaspora. As Canada’s largest Asian film festival, Reel Asian® provides a public forum for Asian media artists and their work, and fuels the growing appreciation for Asian cinema in Canada. The 19th annual film festival runs from November 5 – 15, 2015 in Toronto and Richmond Hill. Reel Asian will be showcasing special projects featuring prominent artists, musicians, up-and-coming filmmakers and also includes an Industry Series for creative minds to connect. Works presented at Reel Asian include films and videos by East, South and Southeast Asian artists in Canada, the U.S., Asia and all over the world.

Event runs November 5 – November 15, 2015. Click the link below for the festival schedule.

Description

Largely unknown to city-dwellers before the 1960s, large apartment complexes (ap’at’ŭ tanji) powerfully shape the landscapes of contemporary South Korean cities. Some are now being memorialized by artists, planners and citizen themselves. How did apparently western-style housing blocks migrate to Korea on such a large scale? To what extent do they reflect the power relations between the global and the local in South Korean cities? What is currently at stake regarding the future of apartments in the contemporary post-industrial Korean society? Combining the perspectives of cultural geography and Korean studies, and using ethnographic materials gathered on sites studied since the mid-1990s (in downtown Seoul) or new ones in the making (Songdo), the symposium will address those issues regarding the significance of South Korea as a “Republic of Apartments” (ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk), where apartment complexes have been the main mediation of the Korean society to urban modernity.

Valérie Gelézeau addresses in her research the various dimensions of space as a social construct in contemporary Korea, via different perspectives including urban geography, cultural geography, regional geography and geopolitics. She is the author of Ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk (“The Republic of Apartments” 2007), Atlas de Séoul (2011, a geographical monograph of Seoul as a megacity) and, with Koen De Ceuster and Alain Delissen, the co-editor of De-bordering Korea. Tangible and intangible legacies of the Sunshine Policy (Routledge 2013).

Description

How do social science researchers studying urban dynamism and change use -photography, maps, film, video, graphic design, and other forms of visual data in their methodological practice? How do visual representations of objects, places, and landscapes foster different ways of seeing and knowing? What kinds of ethical and political dilemmas are generated by the use of visual forms? In this This workshop invites four three distinguished speakers to share their innovative approaches to visual methodology, which move beyond a narrow emphasis on documentary representation and explore the complex issues involved in producing visual interpretations of social, political and cultural life. In addition to sharing their insights about specific projects utilizing visual methods, they will discuss the importance of collaboration and reciprocity in the field of visual methodology as well as complex entanglements around power, inequality, and social justice in the production and dissemination of visual representation and forms.

Chair: Jennifer Jihye Chun, CSK Director

Speakers:
Valérie Gelézeau, the 2015 annual symposium’s distinguished guest speaker from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris) within the Centre for Korean Studies, will share insights from her use of visual methods in projects such as “Ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk” (“The Republic of Apartments”, Seoul, Humanitas, 2007), “Atlas de Séoul” (a geographical monograph of Seoul as a megacity, 2011), and “Korea, Koreas: a situated geography of the division” (2012).

Tong Lam, a historian and visual artist from the University of Toronto Mississauga, will discuss his use of photographic and cinematographic techniques to document China’s phenomenal growth, including images of the precarity of everyday life in a rapidly urbanizing village, the co-existence of affluence and dispossession, and the debris of history in industrial and post-industrial societies.

Ju Hui Judy Han, a cultural geographer of religion, mobility, and difference from the Department of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough, will discuss the use of ethnographic nonfiction and digital storytelling to deepen our understanding of affective geographies and temporalities.

Co-sponsors: Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, Department of Geography and Planning