DocuAsia Pop Up Screening: Blue Butterfly Effect (2017)

Blue Butterfly Effect captures the emergence of a grassroots resistance that emerged from a conservative district in South Korea in response to the impending deployment of THAAD – a Terminal High Altitude Missile Defense system. Reflecting upon the immediate and highly volatile tensions amongst North Korea, China and the US in the context of further militarization of the Korean Peninsula, this is an extremely timely and important film.

Cinevolution is proud to feature Blue Butterfly Effect as a pop-up DocuAsia event, which brings together academics, artists, and community organizers to witness, reflect and critically respond to socio-politcal currents on both sides of the Pacific. Screenings will take place in Richmond and in Vancouver, followed by a panel discussion. Director Emmanuel Moonchil Park will attend both discussions via Skype.

November 18, 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm (Vancouver) — Register Now

November 22, 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm (Richmond) — Register Now

Blue Butterfly Effect
2017 | Documentary | South Korea | 73min

Director: Emmanuel Moonchil Park

In 2016, a small conservative farming town in South Korea, Seongju staged fierce protests against the government’s decision to deploy THAAD, a US missile defense system, in their backyard. At the heart of this movement were young mothers concerned about the wellbeing of their children. At first, they were concerned about the exposure to radiation from the system’s powerful radar emissions. However, over time, they began to learn more about THAAD and what a severe threat it is to the geo-political relations in the Northeast Asian region. Women, who were previously indifferent to social issues in general, now are actively demanding for peace in the region, and taking part in building a socially conscious local community. However, things take an unexpected turn when the head of Seongju county, who previously led this struggle, goes against the will of the residents and accepts a government’s concession to relocate THAAD to an alternative site within the county…

Awards:
Best Documentary Award, Jeonju International Film Festival (2017)

About DocuAsia:
DocuAsia Forum is an annual film event in Metro Vancouver focusing on sensitive and relevant social issues concerning contemporary Asia. By bringing together filmmakers, artists, academics, community representatives, and the general public, DocuAsia provides a platform for informed dialogue concerning the current cultural and economic development in Asia, and global implications for the future.

DocuAsia Forum tells stories about Asia in ways that brief news clips and often-polarized popular commentary simply cannot. Discussion in public spaces, initiated through interaction with thoughtful independent documentary film, provides a powerful opportunity for substantive reflection and communication that nurtures deeper intercultural understanding through a sense of shared purpose.

Guest Speakers

Saturday, November 18 — The Cinematheque, Vancouver 

Emmanuel Park was born in Toronto, Canada. He studied documentary filmmaking at the Korean National University of Arts. In 2013, he completed his first feature length documentary, MY PLACE, which documents his sister’s single-motherhood and his family’s experience of reverse migration from Canada to Korea. MY PLACE (2013) has screened at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival(2014), and won multiple awards such as the Audience Critics’ Prize from the Jeonju International Film Festival(2013), Jury Prize from the Seoul Independent Film Festival(2013), Audience Award from the Seoul Independent Documentary Film Festival(2013), among others. He is now based in Daegu, South Korea, where he continues filming recent events of the ongoing struggle for peace, in Seongju.

Emmanuel will be joining the post film discussion via Skype.

Dina Al-Kassim is a critical theorist who works on political subjectivation, sexuality and aesthetics in transnational modernist and contemporary cultures, including the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States. She is the author of On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant (University of California Press, 2010), which examines parrhesia and the politics of address in the practice of literary ranting. Al-Kassim’s publications have appeared in Grey Room, International Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Public Culture, Cultural Dynamics, and the volume Islamicate Sexualities. Her current project, entitled Exposures: Biopolitics and New Precarity under Globalization asks why and how exposure has come to be a condition of contemporary truth through selective soundings in literature and politics from Lebanon, South Africa, and the United States.

Formerly a professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at UC Irvine, Al-Kassim now teaches in the Department of English and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, where she is also an Associate at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.  Al-Kassim has been a Mellon Postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, a Senior Seminar Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, and a Sawyer Seminar, Residency Fellow at the UCHRI.

David Khang is a visual, performance, and biological artist whose practice is informed by continuing interdisciplinary education. Khang received his BSc (Psychology) and DDS (Dentistry) from the University of Toronto, BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, and MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Khang concurrently completed UCI’s Critical Theory Emphasis, for which he worked with Jacques Derrida, Etienne Balibar, Fred Moten, and Laura Kang. Khang was a 2006-07 recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art Award (Brooklyn, NY), and in 2010, an artist-in-residence at SymbioticA Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts (Perth, Australia). Khang was born in Seoul, grew up in Toronto, and currently resides in Vancouver, where he divides his time between art practice, part-time dentistry, and until 2016, part-time teaching at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Khang is currently a JD candidate at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law.

Am Johal is Director of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement where he produces 100 public events annually focusing on arts and community, social and environmental justice, and urban issues. He has graduate degrees in international economic relations and media philosophy. He is an Associate of SFU’s Centre for Dialogue and SFU’s Institute for the Humanities. He is the author of ‘Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene’ (Atropos Press, 2015) and co-author with Matt Hern of the forthcoming ‘Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale’ (MIT Press, 2018).

Dal Yong Jin is Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. He finished his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. His major research and teaching interests are on social media and platform technologies, mobile technologies and game studies, media (de-)convergence, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies, and the political economy of media. He is the author of several books, such as Understanding the Business of Global Media in the Digital Age (2017, Routledge), Smartland Korea: mobile communication, culture and society (University of Michigan Press, 2017), New Korean Wave: transnational cultural power in the age of social media (University of Illinois Press, 2016), Digital Platforms, Imperialism and Political Culture (Routledge, 2015), De-convergence of Global Media Industries (Routledge, 2013), and Korea’s Online Gaming Empire (MIT Press, 2010). He has also edited several volumes, including The Korean Wave: evolution, fandom, and transnationality(Lexington, 2017), Mobile Gaming in Asia: Politics, Culture and Emerging Technologies (Springer, 2016), and The Political Economies of Media: the transformation of the global media industries (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Wednesday, November 22 — Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Richmond

Emmanuel Park was born in Toronto, Canada. He studied documentary filmmaking at the Korean National University of Arts. In 2013, he completed his first feature length documentary, MY PLACE, which documents his sister’s single-motherhood and his family’s experience of reverse migration from Canada to Korea. MY PLACE (2013) has screened at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival(2014), and won multiple awards such as the Audience Critics’ Prize from the Jeonju International Film Festival(2013), Jury Prize from the Seoul Independent Film Festival(2013), Audience Award from the Seoul Independent Documentary Film Festival(2013), among others. He is now based in Daegu, South Korea, where he continues filming recent events of the ongoing struggle for peace, in Seongju.

Emmanuel will be joining the post film discussion via Skype.

Pia Massie is a multi-media artist, environmental activist, and teacher. She is currently at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in the faculty of Culture + Community, as the artist/designer/scholar in residence. Her work has been exhibited in museums, festivals, and galleries throughout North America and Europe, including The Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Lausanne; and the grunt gallery in Vancouver, BC. – receiving international awards, including: the American Film Institute’s Independent Filmmakers award (LA), Prix St. Gervais (Geneva), and Prix de l’Institut de Design de Montréal. Her writing has appeared in DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art, Foret-Frontiere : Une Action Art / Nature, The Bulletin, Adbusters and Ricepaper magazines. She is deeply grateful to work and live in the Pacific Northwest unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Links:
www.anvilpress.com/Books/damp
www.e-artexte.ca/14538/
www.jccabulletin-geppo.ca/uncovering-the-past-just-beyond-hope/
www.adbusters.org/article/its-a-war-of-words/
www.ricepapermagazine.ca/2013/06/what-doesnt-kill-you-by-pia-massie-2/
www.kccplaybook.org/2014/11/16/the-ebb-and-flow-of-pia-massies-creative-career/
www.artofengagement.gruntarchives.org/the-mattering-map-1996.html

Big Bright Dark (podcast) – What’s Activism Got to do With It?
https://bigbrightdark.org/
https://soundcloud.com/user-608739795/whats-activism-got-to-do-with-it

Irwin Oostindie is one of those rare Canadians to have travelled on both sides of the DMZ. In 1990 he organised a Vancouver printmaking exhibition of woodblock prints from a Gwangju artist depicting the infamous massacre. He was a Canadian Delegate to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Pyongyang, which is the subject of a feature documentary currently in post-production. He befriended Im Su Kyung when she was the only South Korean delegate to the Festival, and travelled with her thru the country to Panmunjom. He has also promoted peace on the Korean peninsula by urging Canada to shift its foreign policy away from war hawk posturing. He has exhibited his film and photography work and screened RoK and DPRK produced films across Canada. He is an active media artist and cultural policy researcher with a focus on genuine reconciliation and redress for Indigenous Peoples. Irwin lives in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

Paul Crowe is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Humanities at Simon Fraser University where he also directed the David Lam Centre for seven years. He is also Editor of the Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies. Crowe has published an edited volume with Philip Clart titled, The People and the Dao (Institut Monumenta Serica, 2009). His most recent publications include and “Heeding the Phoenix Pen: Transpacific Scriptures from Lü Dongbin 呂洞賓,” in Chinese Mobilities and Canada. Edited by Lloyd Wong UBC Press, 2017. Forthcoming in 2017 and 2018 are a chapter titled “What are ‘Daoist’ Virtues? Seeking an Ethical Perspective on Human Conduct and Ecology” in Cultivating Ecovirtues edited by David Chang and Heesoon Bai (U. of Regina Press), and “The Chinese Religious Landscape in the Vancouver Area with A Brief Case Study of Po Yuen Taoist Centre Society,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions. Paris: Editions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

City of Richmond   |  Kwantlen Polytechnic University  |  SFU David Lam Centre