Who: Zhang Yang, Peter Loehr, Richard Peña
What: Film conversation
Where: China Institute online
When: Wednesday, November 17, $10, 8:30
Why: China Institute’s ten-part “Seeing China Through Film” continues November 17 with a discussion about Zhang Yang’s 1999 Shower, a touching tale of a family-run bathhouse in Beijing, starring Zhu Xu as the father and Pu Cunxin and Jiang Wu as his sons. Zhang (Sunflower, Paths of the Soul) will be talking online about changes in China since the late 1990s and the battle between tradition and modernity with series curator and Columbia film professor Richard Peña, the former head of the New York Film Festival, and Peter Loehr, whose Imar Film Co. has produced several of Zhang’s works, including Shower, Quitting, and Spicy Love Soup. The series previously featured Jia Zhangke discussing his debut film, The Pickpocket, film historian Christopher Rea on Yuan Muzhi’s Street Angels, Chen Kaige on his debut, Yellow Earth, and associate professor Weihong Bao on Zheng Junli’s Crows and Sparrows. Note that the films are not screened with the conversation but should be watched in advance; free links are usually provided.