FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 9, 2009

International Series to focus on contemporary China

COLUMBUS, Miss. Mississippi University for Women’s annual International Series will open with a screening of the award-winning Chinese documentary “Last House Standing (2004).” The opening event will be held on campus Thursday, Oct. 15, 7 p.m., in Martin Hall Room 220. 

The International Series explores a specific region/country or topic of international significance. In recognition of MUW’s emerging partnerships with Chinese universities and increasing Chinese student population, the 2009-2010 focus will be on contemporary China. All events in the series are free and open to the public. 

Directed by Chao Gan and Zi Liang, “Last House Standing” focuses on an elderly Shanghai resident who refuses to leave the house he has lived in since childhood, even as unprecedented economic growth leads to demolition and redevelopment all around him.  A witness to the changes in his city since the 1930s, he is now caught between his country’s past and future. The film won the Grand Prize at the EBS International Documentary Film Festival.

Four other documentary film screenings also will be featured, beginning on Nov.  10 with the award-winning “Please Vote for Me (2008),” which charts one Chinese elementary school’s experiments with democracy. The films to be screened in the spring include “Escape from China,” one of the first independent films made in China, which explores a student leader’s flight from China after the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989. 

Also featured in the spring will be a special presentation by by Xiaoxia Li, assistant professor of chemistry at MUW, on the Chinese educational system.

The International Series is financially assisted by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council. For more information, visit www.muw.edu/llp or e-mail kwhitehead@as.muw.edu.