S P E C I A L G U E S T S
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Nia Dinata Director | Love For Share ( Berbagi Suami) Guest Speaker:Friday, September 14, 7 PM |
Nia Dinata was born on March 4, 1970 in Jakarta, Indonesia. She graduated from a Mass Communication major at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. She then took special programs on film production at New York University. After returning from the USA in 1995, Nia works in various projects, mostly for television. In 1998 she won an award in The Indonesian Film for TV Festival for Best Picture and Best Drama for a 90 minutes television drama titled Mencari Pelangi (In Search for the Rainbow). Since then, Nia has directed various TV programs, TV commercials and music videos.
Her first feature film debut was a semi colosal epic titled Ca Bau Kan (The Courtesan) which was produced in 2001. Ca Bau Kan is a film based on the novel by an Indonesian prominent writer, Remy Sylado. Ca Bau Kan is the first movie that revolves around the Chinese community in Indonesia after the Indonesian reform era. For Ca Bau Kan, Nia won an award for Best Promising New Director in Asia Pacific Film Festival, Seoul, Korea in 2002. The film also won Best Art Director in the same festival. In 2003, Ca Bau Kan was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Art & Science to be screened for a candidate of Foreign Film nomination at the Oscar.
In April 2002, she produced a film titled Biola Tak Berdawai (or The Stringless Violin). This film is a debut for independent Indonesian woman director, Sekar Ayu Asmara.
In 2003, Nia directed Arisan! (The Gathering), a satirical comedy with a screenplay written by Nia herself and Joko Anwar. Arisan! receives countless raved worldwide reviews for its boldness in portraying gay characters in Indonesia (the largest Muslim country) and has won audiences' heart for its heartwarming sincerity. The film won numerous awards in film festivals in Indonesia. In the Cinemasia Film Festival in Amsterdam 2004, Arisan! won Best Film. In Asian American International Film Festival in New York 2004, the film is nominated for the Annual Emerging Director Award. The film was officially selected at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Turin International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, to name a few. In MTV Indonesian Movie Awards in 2004, the film won Best Picture, Best Director and Most Favorite Supporting Actor. In the Indonesian Film Festival (FFI) in 2004, the film won Best Film, Best Editing, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor. Arisan! (The Gathering) have been screened in more than fifty film festivals around the world.
In May 2004, for the 20th anniversary of Fonds Sud Cinéma, together with the French Foreign Affairs Minister and festival de Cannes; Nia was invited to join the Cannes Young Directors Program. In June 2004 Nia was selected as one of the juries for the French Film Festival in Indonesia.
In April 2005 she produced a feature film titled Janji Joni (Joni's Promise). The movie is released in April 2005. This is the debut for Joko Anwar (co-writer of Arisan!) as a director. Besides her passion in directing, Nia also believe in the potential of other Indonesian young film makers. With an independent production company she owns, Kalyana Shira Films, she has a commitment to develop interesting scripts and produces more quality Indonesian films. "Janji Joni" had won several awards, such as Best Movie in MTV Indonesia Movie Awards, Best Editing in Asia Pacific Film Festival. And also screened in many Film Festival all over the world, like Asian American International Film Festival, Pusan International Film Festival, and the upcoming screening is in Tokyo International Film Festival.
With her latest feature film, Love for Share (Berbagi Suami,2006), Nia proofs herself to be the leading Indonesian woman director who's brave in tackling sensitive issue such as polygamy in the country with the largest moslem population in the world. The film was in competition for best international narative feature in the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, New York. Love for Share won the Halekulani Golden Award for Best Picture in Hawaii International Film Festival 2006.
At Cannes market 2006, Love for Share was chosen to be one of the film from the Asia Pacific region to be sponsored for its market screening by The French Foreign Ministry in conjunction with the Cinema du Sud pavillion.
In 2007, Nia with TeleProduction International produced Long Road to Heaven a feature film base on the first Bali Bombing tragedy.
Currently she is working on two film projects, first is Quickie Express with genre as 'adult' Comedy, and second is Lotus Requim an anthology film about women in Indonesia, which will be directed by four women directors.
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Sadanand Dhume
Author of | My Friend the Fanatic and Guest Speaker: Friday, September 14, 7 PM |
Sadanand Dhume is a journalist and writer with a longstanding interest in Asia. My Friend the Fanatic, his book on the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, will be published in the summer of 2008.
As a former Indonesia correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Asian Wall Street Journal in Jakarta, Sadanand covered Indonesia's economics, politics, and society. Before that he was the New Delhi bureau chief of FEER.
Sadanand has also written for The Wall Street Journal, YaleGlobal, Foreign Policy, and Harvard International Review among others. He has worked as an associate producer for MSNBC on the Internet and as a journalist in New Delhi and in Santiago, Chile. He has been interviewed by the BBC, VOA, and CNBC Asia, and has spoken about political Islam, Indonesia, and India at Princeton University, Yale University, and at various think tanks in America, Asia, and Australia.
Sadanand holds a master's degree in international relations from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, a master's degree from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, and a bachelor's from Delhi University. He is based at the Asia Society's Washington center, where he writes mainly about political Islam and economic development in Asia
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Anchalee Chaiworaporn | Film Critic
Guest Speaker:
Friday, September 21, 7 PM |
Anchalee Chaiworaporn has contributed for both local and foreign publications including Cashier du Cinema, and Variety as well as other publications from South Korea, Spain, France, England, Japan, and etc. She won Thailand's 2000 best film critic and 2002 best feature writer. Today she is doing research widely on Asian Cinema, from South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, under the fellowships of Nippon Foundation, Japan Foundation, and Asian Scholarship Foundation. She has also been working as a consultant for Cannes' Critic Weeks, Venice Film Festival and etc.
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Woo Yen Yen & Colin Goh | Co-Directors Guest Speaker: Sunday, October 28, 2 PM |
The husband-and-wife filmmaking team of WOO YEN YEN and COLIN GOH won the Montblanc New Screenwriters Award at the 2006 San Sebastian International Film Festival for their feature film, 'Singapore Dreaming', which also opened commercially in Singapore to rave reviews, and has also been nominated for awards at other film festivals. Yen Yen and Colin also created TalkingCock.com, Singapore's most popular satirical website, which has been featured by Time Magazine, Wired, The Economist, the BBC, and was even debated in Singapore's parliament. A former attorney, Colin is now a freelance writer, columnist and cartoonist for various publications, including the Straits Times, the New Paper, and 8Days. Yen Yen, a former Research Fellow and Lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University, is an Assistant Professor at Long Island University in New York, where she teaches curriculum studies. They are presently preparing for their next film, to be shot in New York