 For those who are new, for those who are new to this subject, of course, you have the period of kind of high socialism, basically from 1949, all the way through the late 70s, early 80s, where all films are essentially propagandistic, right, with there's a very stringent limitations in place to creative people in terms of what types of films they can even make. And so you have limited genres, you have the war film, you don't have romances, you don't have martial arts films, you don't, I mean, all of these kind of entertainment style films are basically pushed aside in mainland China. They do exist in Hong Kong and Taiwan. But in mainland China, everything is very much dominated by this political overtone. And a lot of that spins out from something that happened in 1942. Anybody know what happened in 1942? Mao Zedong gave a series of lectures called the 1942 Yen An Talks on Art and Literature, and it was a series of lectures that basically set the theoretical framework for what art should do in society. And so, and what he said in those lectures was essentially that all art should serve politics. It should have a pragmatic and engagement with politics. It should be made for the classes of people that most need art, which he deemed to be the workers, the peasants, and the soldiers, not intellectuals. Art isn't, I mean, today when we think about art, you think of the leisure class, you know, people with disposable income would go to a museum and look at nice beautiful paintings. That's not what art was about. And art was, and there were basically two types of art, and one was correct art and one was incorrect art, which is very strange for us if you grew up in the West at least to think of art as correct or incorrect. We could use good or bad or inspiring or we could use all kinds of adjectives, but we usually don't think of art as being politically correct or politically incorrect. But that was the main rubric through which all art, including film, was judged and created for the next many, many decades. We get to the 80s and we emerge from the Cultural Revolution, and you have the reform era under Deng Xiaoping, you have a new radical transformation of the film scape because all of a sudden Chinese artists start to rediscover their cultural roots, Buddhism, Confucianism, Tai Chi, you know martial arts, all of these types of kind of quintessential elements in Chinese history and culture which had been suppressed and pushed aside, become reembraced and those start reappearing in film. And if you're simultaneous to that, you also have the open door to the West. And so overnight, the doors open and you've got Western philosophy, literature, film, all kinds of creative, you know everything from Kenny G to, you know, Michael Jackson to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and, you know, Western classical music, I mean all of these things get intertwined in a big mishmash and just flood into China and that has a radical impact on all culture, but especially the film world. So around 1984, 83, 84, you have the rise of what's called the fifth generation, which is essentially the Chinese new wave. And so you would start getting more art film coming out of China, and more experimental film. You also start getting the rise of commercial film. So film comedies, you know martial arts films, detective films, thrillers, the types of films that are not 100% dictated by a political mandate. And that continues. And this is, if we had to look at Chinese history, if I had to break it down saying the three phases, I would look at phase one is that kind of high socialist period where politics ruled everything. This is phase two where you have the rise of art cinema and different forms of film that start to emerge. And then if we fast forward into the late 90s into the early 2000s all the way up into the present, we have the rise of commercial cinema. And this has been the probably the single most transformative shift in Chinese film history. This is the box office for all of modern Chinese history from well PRC history from 49 all the way into the 90s. It wasn't even in the top 20 or 30 globally in terms of global box office. Today it's number one globally. And so just in the course of the last 20 years, the commercial rise of Chinese cinema was a juggernaut just massive. Part of that was fueled by, you know, the rising, you know, all the economic transformation of China right the miracle that we've seen play out over the last couple of decades. But your question specifically honed in on this more nationalistic kind of thrust Jason that's been happening and in Chinese cinema of late and indeed one one aspect to the commercial rise of Chinese cinema is also the way in which a lot of filmmakers in China and government have found ways to marry commercial cinema with political cinema. And so I think for there was a period of time where I thought the world of miles 1942 talks was of the past, we had kind of moved behind that we were in a new phase, but especially during the last five to 10 years and even more so under Xi Jinping's rule. I mean, ways of taking that political ideology that was so prominent during the first phase of Chinese film history and re-injecting it into commercial cinema. And this started, I mean, it's been going on for a long time but often it wasn't very successful. You would have these so-called Jushan Liu or main melody films propaganda films. Everybody would take them seriously. A lot of people would just, you know, people would hand out free tickets and work units in China encouraging people to go and people kind of roll their eyes and wouldn't really take it serious. But what happened around 2009. There was a series of films, one called Founding of the Great Republic, another called Founding of the Party. And these are essentially historical films about celebrating pivotal moments in the history of the Chinese Communist Party and the struggle to establish this new nation and the party, etc. These are essentially propaganda films, but what they did was they cast A-list Chinese stars and not just one or two, but basically every Chinese A-list star you could imagine appeared in cameos in these films and they were extremely successful commercially. And this is where the kind of green light first went on that, wow, we can take Hollywood style star system and using star power to try to push our kind of political views and bring them together in a more organic way. And with those were a little clumsy but over the next couple of years they would keep reinventing this formula. And so you fast forward to say 2017 you have a film like Wolf Warrior 2, which is borrows from American action film structures of like Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger films from the 80s. And it's set in Africa and it's got a Chinese soldier hero. It's kind of a renegade, and it's very much a flag waving patriotic film, but they hired a Hollywood action director, the same guy who did the Avengers and did the Captain America movies. They have Hollywood actors, a Hollywood composer and essentially they're using top Hollywood talent to package of not just talent but also Hollywood test road proven genres that worked right the action film 80s action film, but they're using it to wrap it in a more propagandistic message. And that was so successful. It made somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million. If you're not familiar with what global box offices look like. I mean a film to make that much money this is getting close to the so called billion dollar club for Hollywood. The Avengers, you need Iron Man you need one of these tentpole action franchises usually to get into the billion dollar mark and you need a global market and this is essential. Films like, you know, just a film like I say Avengers Endgame has a budget maybe if $200 or $300 million and with a budget uploaded budget like that they need all of these international markets to make their money back. So I think it was made for maybe 50 or $60 million. And it made comparable amount in terms of its box office earnings but here's the real key. It did it in one market. They didn't need America they didn't need Canada they didn't need Japan they needed China. And, and so that's the real shift here is that we see this new and the emergence of the Chinese market not only as able to produce these kind of more propagandistic films that borrow from commercial elements and marry them together in a way that works with local audiences and Wolf Warrior 2 was not an anomaly. We've had many films since then, Red High, the Honghai Xindong, the Operation Red Sea. We've had My Country My People, many more recently the 800. So there's been a series of these kind of patriotic films that are doing very well at the box office and meanwhile Hollywood films are having an increasingly difficult time gaining a foothold in China. And I think it's also tied to a rise in nationalist sentiment where local audiences are much more inclined to want to support a local film than a Hollywood film. It's just you know this is a very natural sentiment, given the tension between the US and China people aren't going to want to give their money to America when they can support local films. And so for Hollywood this is probably the greatest challenge they've ever faced because it's a brand new model that I don't think they've encountered before. In the initial response to Jason's question, did you want to follow that I get everything? Or you had a follow-up about recommendations? Yes, yes, like recommendation. I think like what around 2000s, like there's some like amazing films like my friend just watched Ba Wang BSD so I'm trying to watch that. And then I do want to like ask you about like this movie specifically because I watched it last year and then as I fascinated by it, I'm sure you know it's called Zhang Zidan Fei or Let the Bullets Fly. And then just like afterwards I always have, I always go on this website called Douban to read movie reviews and stuff and like according to those reviews like this, this movie is kind of, it's kind of like inferring about like, you know, the CCP not doing like good things and stuff like it's almost like kind of like a theory about how like the director is like hiding all those facts and like kind of hidden storyline. That's kind of almost like, you know, accusing of the CCP of like turning against the people like, you know, after 1949 and stuff and then so like, have you watched this movie and like do you like, like, just like know what I'm talking about and stuff. Sure, sure. So the Ron Zidan Fei is a film by Jiang Wen who was what China's bleeding actor for many years and then he turned to directing in the 90s, and has since become one of China's top grossing film directors. And there, he does play with allegory and these kind of, he leaves a certain, he plays with a liminal space between what's approved and what you can kind of sneak in what Martin Square says he would call a smuggler right kind of smuggling these ideas into his films under the radar of the hundreds of times. And he was able to do that because he's not coming out black and white and saying this but he's just making subtle inferences and whether, and how much of those are intended or unintended or audiences over reading or accurately reading is all up to debate. He'll never come out and say yes, this was meant to be X, Y and Z. That film did very well for him it was a real blockbuster but I've always when I think of Jiang Wen his directorial debut I believe it was around 1995, called in the heat of the sun. Tanlan the Roots is the Chinese title. That's always been not only my favorite film of his but I think really one of the standout films of the last, you know, 25 years it's really an incredible incredible film it's. This is a long BG farewell my concubine farewell my concubine came out in the early 90s and it was part of a trio of films that all looked at the cultural revolution through the lens of trauma and suffering so you had the to live by john emo you had the blue kite by Tien drum drum and you had my concubine and all of them were quite similar in terms of the historical judgment they placed on the cultural revolution. Jiang Wen film is important because it presents the cultural revolution from a completely different perspective. He was not a victim during that period he was someone who because of the cultural revolution got unprecedented kind of liberation his parents were busy kid his age was too too young to be a red guard. So therefore he was in schools were closed so it was this period of kind of wild liberation that's actually adopted from a novella called wild animals. And so, it's this portrait of kids just gone wild the parents aren't away. There's chaos in the streets there's in fighting between these different political factions. It was an important film in terms of giving us an alternative perspective on what the cultural revolution meant to different types of people. It wasn't a unified experience. And at the same time it exhibited I think a real incredible use of film language metaphor montage. It really just established him just exploding onto the scene as one of the most creative filmmakers of this generation I, I have to say honestly disappointed he didn't kind of live up to that promise in that first film, because that film really hinted it incredible things to come and I felt that many of his later films kind of struggle a little bit. But anyway, that's probably talking too much but that's my response to that. But I definitely recommend you all check out in the heat of the sun if you can find it. I absolutely will. Thank you so much. Sure. Alexander. Can you tell us about yourself and let us know if you have a question. Yeah sure so thank you so much for coming to speak with us today Mr Barry and also thank you for hosting this panel really interesting topic. So I'm a senior at Tufts I'm a member of the epic colloquium. And I guess the reason I'm here today is so part of our major spring assignment is to to produce a pretty significant research paper and the topic that I'm actually looking at is Chinese soft power and the China and the CCP to export their ideology and their culture all around the world and obviously cinema and the movie industry is a major role, a major part of that it's what we're going to be looking at a lot. So I was just wondering, I guess if I had a question, how you feel you know I know you mentioned Hollywood being challenged by all of this. But I think what China has been doing, especially as a recent in the actual exportation of their cinema culture you know how much they do need the rest of the world or if they really can just rely on their massive population within their own borders. Yeah. I have a question, and it's a big question. It's for several about in roughly 2013 or 2014 Xi Jinping actually gave a speech where he called upon Chinese artists and writers and filmmakers and intellectuals to send Chinese culture out into the world, and in the mind with that there was a massive expansion of Confucius Institutes there was translation subsidies to translate Chinese literature, and there was a real urge to open studios in Hollywood and other global hubs of filmmaking to try to make Chinese cinema, you know more visible to the world. I have to say that they haven't been that successful in exporting Chinese films globally so you don't see if you look at, I mean look at the China for the last decade and if you if you looked at the Chinese top 10 films on any given week. With the exception of periods where there were political blackouts there would almost always be Hollywood films in the top 10. So the US box office or the Indian box office or the British box office, how many Chinese films are in their top 10 films of the week if they haven't cracked the code so to speak and found that thing that will make Chinese films more accessible to mass numbers of global audiences, and they've tried different formulas to try to do that. For instance, there was a period. And give or take where several several of China's top directors like Zhang Yimou Feng Xiaogang Chen Kaige they all tried making films to combine Hollywood in the US and the typical way they did that was to take a Chinese story and plug in a list Hollywood actors. And so you have examples like back to 1942 a film by Feng Xiaogang, which starred Tim Robbins and Adrian Brody. Flowers of War, Jin Ling Shesanchai by Zhang Yimou which starred Christian Bale in a film about the Nanjing Massacre, or The Great Wall, a Zhang Yimou film starring Matt Damon there was one after another, these kind of attempts to combine the two and the thought was, we get a a list Hollywood actor a Christian Bale, you know Batman himself. How can we fail we get a great story a great historical backdrop you plug in a Hollywood superstar. And most of these films did pretty well in the Chinese market but none of them got a major foothold abroad. And so that formula was clearly not working and culminated with The Great Wall which was the ultimate failure it lost something like $70 million for the producers and and not only the loss of money but I think for all other film companies in China they saw that failure as the kind of nail in the coffin to the so called co-production model and a lot of them thought it just isn't working. It was also around that time, you started to see an alternative way to leverage soft power which was not making a film about China, but having Chinese investors pour money into Hollywood. And so it was right around 2005 maybe 2006 that if you started to pay attention to the credits of your favorite Hollywood blockbuster movies, you'd see, you know, I remember being in the theater for Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, and it's opened up and it said produced by Alibaba pictures and film channel, and one after another all of these big tentpole Hollywood films started to have major investment from Chinese financiers. That's also, you can look at that as another aspect of this soft power game. And even though they're not making films about China, I mean a film like Green Book which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards a few years ago. People keep wondering when is China going to win an Academy Award? Green Book was financed by Chinese production company, so in some sense they already have. They've already won that battle in a sense. So, but that's another way that this kind of works invisibly and unless you're scrutinizing the credits, a lot of people might realize that films like Smurfs, you know, and Terminator, the most recent Terminator, and so many of these big Hollywood style action films are actually in large part funded by Chinese money, at least they have been over the last several years. And so that's another way that this has been playing out. Of course the trade war has changed all of this and complicated things greatly, but from, you know, 2005, you know, all in gaining speed from around that time all the way up until around, you know, 2008, 817 is when things started hitting some hurdles. There had been a lot of Chinese investment in Hollywood films. Did I answer your question, Alex, or any follow up? Yeah, thank you very much. The point about, I actually had no clue about the Chinese financing of Hollywood films. It's a really interesting thing. Thank you. Sure, sure. Layla, am I pronouncing that right? Yes. Thank you. Thanks Professor Barry. It's such a fascinating talk. It's like, I love films, but I actually haven't watched a ton of Chinese films, seeing Chinese myself. So, so, so I'm graduated from Chats University and I was a former epic member. The theme of our year was liberal war order. So, myself, my preference is to watch films that have more universal and transcendent themes. So I guess my question is, do you know of any films that we touched upon Chinese films haven't done very well overseas just generally, but are there films that have universal themes that you think are have potential of striking according to international audience? Definitely, definitely. Like any good film, if it's a good film, it's going to transcend those boundaries and it's going to speak to the human condition in ways that go beyond, you know, one language or one culture. So, there's many films out of China that I try to champion and push forward. And if you want some recommendations. I mean, that's, I'm going to go a little broader than just PRC, but just Chinese language cinema in general. There's a filmmaker who passed away several years ago named Edward Yang, who was originally from Taiwan. And he has a film called EE, why I why I just a gorgeous, powerful film of it's a basically a family genre, a multi generational so you have protagonists from your small children, young adults, teenagers, middle someone going through a middle life crisis, their elderly parents suffering from health issues. And through what happens just in the course of a couple days through the lens of this family, it is such a really powerful beautiful film. So I would recommend Edward young EE also he has a film called a brighter summer day. Both of those films are distributed by the criterion collection in the US so they're beautiful 4k restorations and special features and all of that so I would recommend those. I think Jason earlier also was asking for recommendations. There's a film blind shaft by a PRC filmmaker named Lee young who studied in Germany. Really powerful and disturbing film but incredible, incredible storytelling and and very dark but definitely worth watching. So I would recommend blind shaft. There's a film director in China today named Ja Zhang Ke, who I've written quite a bit about over the years, and I would strongly recommend his early films, especially show and platform. I can type the titles in the chat for everyone. Thanks. Yeah, I found blind shaft already is called munching in Chinese right so yes. Thank you. I found it. Okay. Oh wow. Those are those are a couple titles you guys can look for. If you're interested in martial arts films. Honestly, I think a lot of the martial arts films being produced these days are kind of garbage, but I have a soft Spartan in my heart for a filmmaker named King who who was in Chinese his name is Hu Jin Tran. And I will put that into. He is really kind of the pinnacle of this wusha genre of martial arts filmmaking and he was active from the mid 60s. He was active all the way through the 80s but his masterpieces are all done in the from the mid 60s to the late 70s. And so he did a few films like legend of the mountain raining in the mountain, a touch of Zen, just gorgeous. Not just for the action sequences but gorgeous cinematography and attention to detail and recreation of this kind of imaginary landscape of what traditional China look like and I would strongly recommend King whose films as well. And of course, I have to say how shall she if he's a Taiwan film director makes really if you're interested in art house cinema. His films are challenging moving beautiful introspective layered nuanced. They're the kind of films you watch once and twice and 10 times and you're still learning and you're still discovering new details in them. So anyway, those are a couple recommendations for everybody. Definitely a stuff to do rest is and writing homework this weekend. Yeah. All right, Yen Ching, you want to introduce yourself. Yeah. Hi. Thank you so much for hosting this panel and discussion. I was also a former epic student actually did it last year. The topic being genocide and mass atrocities prevention. And I guess my question for you, because I like grew up. I grew up in China and then I moved here. And I feel like, like every year, like, during the national holiday they always put out like a very like patriotic themed film, or just some sort of film that promotes this like patriotic message. I'm just like curious to know, like, where do you think the Chinese cinema, like cinematic industry is heading in the future. Like, what are some of the messages that they're trying to get out like is it still the same, like patriotic message or are we seeing like some changes in this trend. No, we, I hate to say it, but I feel like going backward a little bit in terms of we the Chinese film market had moved away, somewhat from the patriotic messages. And they were still there in many films, but there were there was another type of films that like we talked about with John when that we're able to explore that liminal space that kind of edgy space, neither here nor there but they can get away with more. What's happened was under Xi Jinping the sphere and when creativity is possible is retracting it's getting smaller and smaller. And this is all kinds of filmmakers and writers who I know in China talk to me about this I even the last six months I had probably had six mainland Chinese writers who are established writers many books out. And they have texted me and said hey I'm I can't get my latest novel published you know any publishers in Taiwan that might be able to help me with this film may I have a friend who's a filmmaker here in Los Angeles who is just kind of hanging out laying low she says she ends up in a bush of hiding the show. You know it's not a, it's not the time to make films in China, because you just, there's so the type of fishies and independent film director, and the types of film she makes you just can't make in China right now. And so there's an increasing number of filmmakers and artists who are pursuing. They've become kind of dissidents so to speak they they're in New York they're in Paris they're in Los Angeles because there's no space for them to, to continue working in China. And about, let's say five years ago or so there was a major shift in policy in the Chinese film industry, where in the entire industry was now under the industry of propaganda, the Shenzhen Bull. And so that's a big shift. I mean we had kind of detached film to some degree from propaganda but then they put it back in. And so there's the censorship process is still quite stringent. And, and I like I said earlier I think there's a certain perfection to how to marry propaganda with commercial genres that is becoming very effective. And that's picking up steam. And when you if you can make a film like that that makes $800 million, they're going to keep making them. And these films that you know, project core values right and that present this Zheng Nangliang like the positive energy, you know these are all political terms right to politically correct films. And so we're seeing more and more of those. And what's happening is that alternative voices, independent films, edgy films, experimental films, films that present a different side of society. There's increasingly less space for those to be made exhibited or even exist. And so we're getting I feel like any healthy film market you need to have a multitude of different voices and perspectives. And what we're seeing is this distillation to one type of film one voice one story that's advocated one vision of history. And if you deviate from that you're out. And so artists are faced with a very dire situation it's either get on board, and be a good boy and a good girl and make the films that they want you to make. With that, you will probably financially prosper and do well and have accolades. However, if you don't get in line. You either shut up and don't make films anymore, or you go abroad and you become a dissident, I mean those there's there's just that you don't have that middle ground where you could make, you know, you know people like, I mean, you know, makers that have been faced to make these difficult choices and so I think it's becoming really challenging the last couple of years due to current policy changes. And the trade war or Cold War with the United States is only exacerbated things and made it much worse and, and it's led to a situation where so many cultural figures in China kind of feel you're with us or you're against us. So everything is now in black and white just like it was in Mao's 1942 talks. And that is I feel a really sad step backward. Did I answer your question and Ching. Yeah, thank you. Sure. You there am I pronouncing your name correctly. Yes, you are. You have a you want to introduce yourself and you have a question. I'm a senior at Tufts University I'm studying international relations. I'm sorry I just got back from outside so I've pretty much missed the entirety of the first half of the session. So I don't have a question right now but if through this conversations, something comes up I'll be sure that you know. Sure, feel free to jump in if something comes up. David, or did we have David, I did the. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I'm David, I'm a sophomore at Tufts and I'm part of the epic colloquium. And yeah, I don't really have a question but it's very interesting to hear because I don't know too much about Chinese films. Anything you're curious about or want to hear more about. I think Jason actually addressed most of what I was interested in all the recommendations and touch. Okay, yeah and recommendations of course, everyone has their own type of film they prefer so is there, I should ask you David is there a certain genre or type that you gravitate towards and I can tailor fit recommendations for you. I have to think about, can you come back to me. Sure. Okay, Kevin, you there Kevin. I have a question. I was I was curious to understand the portrayal of the peripheral and like the central areas of China within Chinese cinema. This is peripheral areas like Tibet, Xinjiang, or like central area that's like central China rule China what's the portrayal of them in Chinese cinema how is that change over the years. And what is Chinese cinema trying to make a picture off from there. Yeah that's a great question. I've also undergone radical transformations over the decades for most of PRC film history portrayals of ethnic minorities in China have been made by hand Chinese which is the majority right. And so there's been a certain other ring, right. So most of this history you didn't have minority directors making films about themselves and telling their own stories it was told for them. And so, for instance, in the 1950s there was a film called non surfs, literally like the, you know, agrarian slaves I guess would be the title, and it was a film about Tibet by a hand hand Chinese director, and it actually beautifully shot the cinematography if you see this film it's some of the most gorgeous black and white cinematography you'll ever encounter. But in terms of the ideological thrust of the film, it was very much in line with PRC political ideology so it was showing how Tibetan people were exploited and taken advantage of by the landlord system and everyone else was getting kind of a slave and they were whipped and they were beaten. And, and it basically serves as political justification for why they needed to be quote unquote liberated by the CCP government. And of course, 1959 there was a major incident in Tibet where the PLA Army moved in they took over the Dalai Lama fled to India and we all know the story. And so there was movement in film to try to tell the correct version of history right and that's why it was a need for the Chinese government to move into Tibetan films like surfs tried to do that work, the cultural work the ideological work you know this was soft power before soft power. And then there were also a lot of films like a little Sanjia sister little where they kind of show off the song and dance of traditional Chinese minorities when the scenery and the beautiful colors and, and there were a lot of these there's like a whole genre of minority films in China from the late early 50s, all the way through the 70s you have a whole series of these types of films. Today, it's changed quite a bit you still get some of that stuff happening in films but you do have a lot of independent filmmakers who are now trying to present an alternative view of what life is like in these marginal regions or areas with more minority individuals so. One of the best examples is a filmmaker named one my time or a pen and say my who is a Tibetan director, and one of the first ethnic Tibetan directors, who has been making a series of really gorgeous powerful films their art films so they're kind of experimental, difficult for mainstream audiences, but really a brilliant filmmaker, and he's been making films for the last 1015 years films like old dog. The balloon I think is one of his more recent films, but he's he's a real wonderful artist to check out if you're interested in art cinema, but there are there is a rise of filmmakers like that. But of course, all of these filmmakers know that there are red lines you can't cross and so like today in the West in the headlines you hear about the Xinjiang camps and you hear about, you know self emulation in Tibet and all of these explosive politically social issues, you won't see portrayals of any of that in Chinese films about minorities, and the result is you get a real in balance to view because there are certain topics in China that are invisible, they just don't exist you cannot hear anything about them. And then in the West, that's all you hear about. And so, both sides are kind of at an extreme place in terms of how they engage with minority cultures. And so if you if you live here in the United States probably all you think of when you think of minorities in China is the human rights violations. And if you live in China, you that's the last thing you think about because it's just erased from the news. And so I think for those of us who are bilingual and cultural, the best is you take it all in and you kind of got to make your own decision and your own gain your own perspective, because if you're only getting media from one source, it's certainly going to be highly skewed and highly prejudicial. And so that's why, and if you and if you're not multilingual that's fine all of these, you know, whether it's China or America or India they all have English language media where you can get their perspective, even if you're a monolingual person. But I think it's really important to do that to try to create your own more balanced interpretation of what's happening globally. Yeah. Who is next, Kevin. Michael, I didn't talk to you. I was muted. Okay, go ahead, Kevin. Kevin. Michael I'm not current in the top students. And, but I was a top saloon, some years ago. And I'm a member of the advisory board for IGL. So, when I saw your name, I was excited because I, I watched you and Professor Detement last Thursday. Okay, great to talk about John emo. And I thought it was a very interesting and I want to appreciate. Well, thank you for, you know, coming to talk and talking to our students. I think it's a wonderful thing for you to do. And I'm not going to take a time from the students. I just want to make a general comment. In the past couple of days, we talk about technology, politics economy, your name. Okay, but what I feel, and I think the students could tell me if I'm wrong, there's a lack of a cultural aspect. We talk about US China relations. It really started with the culture. And I don't know if the students remember the ping pong diplomacy is what really started. Right. And in the last session. It was so moderated, you know, people keep saying, we need to divide government from people. Can you divide, you really cannot. Right, you really cannot. And at the end of the day, what really include China and US together in my personal opinion is people is culture. So I really think, you know, cinema is such a big part of the culture, it has such broad reach to people. And so when you talk about the positive energy coming out of a cinema coming out of this cultural impact. I think it's great. I think it's very important. So I just want to make the comment I want to leave the time for the students. No, thank you Kevin I appreciate that and, and I totally agree I mean for the last couple of years. When we think of China. Well, you hear is trade war trade war new Cold War right. I've always felt for years, the bigger story behind that is the culture in that not the trade imbalance but the cultural imbalance the lack of understanding. And so much of the trade war and the so called Cold War is due, I think, to the lack of understanding the lack of engagement, and the real tragedy is now that there is this tension between China and the US. And both sides is to do what to shut down things. So you see all these programs exchange programs, full bright embassies closing, you know, just funding being cut off Confucius institutes being shut down all of these different ways in which the governments are pulling back and becoming more and more insular and inward looking. That's the opposite of what we need, we need more engagement we need more understanding. And because that's what got us into this problem in the first place. And I think China actually has done a much better job at understanding America than America has done understanding China I think just turn on CCTV and sure a lot of its people are sick, but if there's a earthquake in Argentina if there's an election in the Philippines if there's a humanitarian crisis in Thailand, you see that in the cct news. If you look at CNN, at least the last year, Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump, because it's all ratings based whereas CCTV it's more because it's a socialist country they have a they call it propaganda call it education but they're not beholden to the ratings in the way that Fox or CNN are, and so that the news just askewed to what eyeballs are attracted to. And, and so, and you see this manifested so powerfully and just every day interactions with people and their basic knowledge of the other country. So, if you go to a Chinese university and walk around campus and just talk to random students and ask them, Hey, do you know who Mark Twain is, do you know who Abraham Lincoln is, do you know who Dustin Hoffman is, they probably have all heard those names, you know, Michael Jackson, you know they know these people. If you walk around, if I walk around UCLA or you guys walk around Tufts and grab average American kids and ask them hey, who is Lucien, who is John Lai, who is Beijing Mao Dun, you know, Moyan. Most American students have never heard any of those names. And, and it speaks to an incredibly tragic kind of the insular nation nature of so many Americans who just have blinders on and they only care about what impacts them and their daily lives. And I think we need to wake them up and that they're not the center of the world anymore and, and we're an interconnected world and interconnected culture. And I think there's a responsibility for all of us to get outside of our shelves, shelves and try to understand other cultures in a more proactive way. That's the only way I think we're going to get out of this, this trade war this tension that we're having I think there's such a deep fundamental misunderstanding again on both sides but I think in particular the US needs to do more work and catching up. I mean look at even language, you know kids in China throughout China elementary school students are all studying English how many Americans are studying Chinese. There's just a fundamental imbalance here. I can't agree, you know, more with you. It's, it's something, you know, I think people in both countries, especially, I have hope in the students, the younger generation, you know, to help two countries I was a beneficiary of the business opened up, you know, in the late 70s, I was probably the first on the first students to come to the US. And I value that I value that greatly. So anyway, Michael is really I'm sorry I didn't turn my camera on just in the field different things but I'll talk to more with you about the movie while my childhood friend is long time producer for John emo. Oh, I made many movies to live hero and the flying digger blah blah blah, I was young emo so but some other time. Yes, yes, yes, no I've I also had the pleasure of working with john emo for many years I was his interpreter for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, I subtitle a few of his films and when he used to come to the US to promote his films I was his interpreter that would do junkets and events with him and thanks. Yeah, you're Chinese are quite impressive. No. Thank you. Thank you Kevin. Yes, please. So I just as your conversation with my with Kevin was like to polluting to recently I think last week tough shut down the Confucius Institute on campus. I think we already see, you know, the reduction of people to people like cultural exchanges or just, you know, lived experiences at least on a campus level. And so how, how would you sort of help ensure that this sort of stops happening so that there's a lot more cultural exchange people to people relations that can kind of bridge the gaps that both of you were talking to. So it's not happening on a campus level. You know, where is it going to happen. And so, yeah, I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Yeah, we unfortunately we can't rely on kind of the existing infrastructures whether it be the government or our campus necessarily to facilitate these kind of exchanges and I think we have to do it on an individual level with reaching with reading, visiting these countries, you know, interactions with Chinese students or it's not it's not just us China it's I think it's a problem that crosses many many countries and I think we all need to work hard to be better global citizens and kind of all wear sunglasses or rose tinted glasses and and the color of that is determined by where you grow up the language you speak your religion, your, you know, that your parent also many things go into that and it's like, and it, of course, this makes us who we are and these are beautiful things right you should celebrate your culture and your religion and your language and all of this at the same time we have to be conscious about how those things can also be burdens and how they can make us prejudicial to other perspectives. So, I mean, for me, so much of my life I feel like it's trying to take these glasses off or in Chinese there's the idiom jing ji jia wa the frog in the well, and where in the idiom talks about a frog at the bottom of a well. And it looks up and all I can see is that little slice of sky that is visible at the top of the well little circle right of clouds and it thinks that's the world. And it's only until it emerges right that you realize wow there's it's that was just a tiny corner, and there's so much more and I feel like all of us are frogs and wells. For me one of my goals in life is not because when you do climb out, you realize you're still in another well, a bigger well and then you got to climb out of that one, and then you got to climb out of that one. And I feel like life is a process of climbing out of wells and, and as you get older you you feel like maybe you made it out of one then maybe another and, and, but I think it takes hard work to do that because it, what it means is challenging your own internalized prejudices and assumptions, ideology, and realizing that it's a rich world and people in growing up in Pakistan and people growing up in Israel and people growing up in Holland where they all have a very different way of seeing the world. And I think the more of those divergent perspectives you expose yourself, the bigger your heart grows and the more embracing you become of other cultures, and the more you are able to see yourself in your own cultures limitations in a more critical and thoughtful way. And so I think, and again it's hard work but I think it's something we should all strive for but a lot of the hard work has to be done on an individual level. And so, yeah I don't have a secret to it it's just it's it's just doing putting in the hours and the hard work and, and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, you know exposing yourself to things that aren't in your comfort zone, because that's ultimately going to make you awesome. That in some ways is also what cinema does by like making this experience people's feelings emotions through a medium in which you can see through two to three hours of what something you completely don't understand can be is definitely an experience that is kind of similar to what you're talking about but still that that's not like that step one starts to do everything we can do at an individual level. That being said, I really want to thank you Dr Michael Barry for coming here. Thank you for your passion and thank you for your interest in cinema and culture. This was super interesting to me and I'm sure for all of us who are here. I really appreciate your time and I appreciate everyone else who was here. A lot of us are epic people so thank you. Thank you all for showing up again. I'm much appreciate it. And thank you again Dr Barry. It was a good weekend ahead. Yeah, it was delightful to meet everybody and I wish you all the best in your studies and Kevin I think is done with his studies but I wish you the best nevertheless and whatever endeavors you're doing. And yeah it's a pleasure to meet everybody. Thank you. Thank you Michael. Thank you.