8 June – 16 October at the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Museum

A traveling exhibit on the world’s refugees has made its way to Honolulu. “Torn From Home: My Life as a Refuge” takes young visitors and adults on an inspiring, hands-on journey into the lives of millions of children who were forced to flee their homes in conflict regions throughout the world.

The exhibit is on a national five-year tour and will celebrate its grand opening at the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center on June 20, recognized as World Refugee Day, with vibrant cultural performances, ethnic foods and more from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The exhibit will remain in Hawaii through October 16, 2010.

“Torn From Home: My Life as a Refugee” gives children and adults an opportunity to gain a firsthand look into the often challenging realities faced by refugee children and their families, and yet experience the personal triumphs of rebuilding their lives in a new land. It showcases seven exhibit areas: Home, Losing Home, Registration, Refugee Camp, Medical Clinic and Going Home.

The self-guided tour walks museum visitors through exhibit areas where they will learn about the shelter, food, medical care, schooling, and play activities of children in refugee camps. The exhibition features interactive multimedia, as well as photographs, artwork and testimonials of refugee children from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, and Afghanistan.

“By hosting this exhibit, we hope that children and adults in Hawaii become more aware of what is happening in other countries throughout the world,” says Loretta Yajima, president of the Board of Directors at the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center. “We hope that awareness will help them to develop a sense of empathy and compassion, while also exploring themes such as “What makes a home?” and “What is peace?”

The Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center has partnered with local community organizations, as well as individuals from regions including Laos, Vietnam and Burma, to recognize Hawaii’s own refugee populations. Monthly cultural events will showcase each culture through food, performances, and more.

The Center has also crafted extension exhibits specifically designed to address Hawaii’s diverse immigrant communities. Children will gain traits such as understanding the beauty of our differences by participating in various projects, such as creating a peace quilt. The Center itself has galleries of hands-on, interactive exhibits that help children learn about themselves and the world beyond our Island shores through exploration and guided self-discovery.

“Torn From Home: My Life as a Refugee” was developed in partnership with Lied Discovery Children’s Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, and international aid organizations including UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Philanthropist and part-time Hawaii resident, Pam Omidyar helped conceive the exhibit and personally provided core funding. Transportation funding to Hawaii was provided by Unbound Philanthropy.

Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center | Torn From Home: My Life as a Refugee Exhibit

Looking for a place to listen to radio from across southeast asia? The CSEAS staff recently discovered radiotime, a free streaming radio program online called radiotime! All the major southeast asian countries are listed, in addition to other countries across the globe. Some countries are even further categorized by locality! Check out the site and be sure to let us know what you think!

Until today, the Muslim Societies in Asia & the Pacific program (MSAP) only had a facebook presence online, so we are very excited to announce their new website: http://www.msiahawaii.com!  We hope our readers enjoy the site as much as we do!

The Center for Southeast Asian Studies would like to recognize the incredible efforts of graduate assistants, Nezia and Effendy, who were instrumental in the building of the Muslim Societies in Asia program.  The quality and success of the current MSIAP is a testament to their hard work and the CSEAS wishes them the best of luck on their future endeavors.

The First International Conference on
HUMAN RIGHTS in SOUTHEAST ASIA

Organized by the Southeast Asian Human Rights Studies Network and the Center for Human Rights Studies and Social Development (CHRSD), Mahidol University, Thailand.

14-15 October 2010
Bangkok , Thailand
www.seahrcon.org

Human rights in Southeast Asia are at a critical juncture. There are a number of positive developments in the promotion and protection of human rights, such as, the institutionalization of the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), formation of national human rights commissions or institutions and the development of a dynamic human rights discourse within the region. These occur, however, alongside a significant amount of human rights violations in a wide variety of areas. There is still much work to do in the promotion and protection of human rights of ASEAN peoples.

The First International Conference on Human Rights in Southeast Asia intends to bring together academics, researchers, graduate and post-graduate students, civil society organizations and government agency representatives who work on the research and greater understanding of human rights in Southeast Asia . It seeks to explore the ways researchers and civil society have begun to make more critical contributions to deepening the understanding of human rights-based framework and actual issues through in-depth engagement with localized sites within the Southeast Asian region. Likewise, as human rights is an emerging area of study at universities and academic institutes in Southeast Asia , the conference also aims to provide a venue for the increasing body of research work being done by academics and graduate students on Southeast Asian human rights.

Possible Panel Themes will include:
1. Universality and particularity of human rights
2. Individual and collective rights
3. Gender, sexuality and women’s rights
4. Rights of vulnerable and marginalized groups
5. Peace, conflict, security and human rights
6. Challenges to human rights in Southeast Asia
7. Media, advocacy and popularization of human rights

Paper Submission Details
Those who wish to present a paper at the conference are invited to submit an abstract of 300-350 words and a short biographical paragraph of 150 words in English by 30 June 2010 to Ms. Saksinee Emasiri at seahrcon@gmail.com. Please indicate to which proposed panel you think your paper would best fall under. The full paper should be about 5,000-6,000 words.

Successful applicants will be notified by 15 July 2010. Full papers are due on 30 September 2010.

Photo taken from flickr user j l t under creative commons license

This month, NPR Senior Asia Correspondent Mike Sullivan introduces a five-part series focusing on the Mekong River. Beginning part at the river’s source in the central highlands of China, “Sullivan journeys the length of the river and tells the story of the people who live along its banks.” This part-travelogue/part-ethnography is also available via podcast and includes interactive maps, stunning visuals, and Sullivan’s award-winning reporting. Read on for summaries of parts 2 – 4 that chronicle Sullivan’s experience through Southeast Asia; part 5 coming soon!

Part 2: Sullivan reports from east-central Myanmar’s Shan state, which borders the Mekong. It’s a remote area that, like the river itself, has an often troubling past, in a country where reporters aren’t welcome. podcast | full article

Part 3: Sullivan travels to Thailand and Laos, which are on opposite sides of the river known in their local languages as Mae Nam Khong. The two countries found themselves in different camps after the communist takeover of Laos in 1975. Now, they face different challenges. | podcast | full article

Part 4: Sullivan reports from Cambodia, where the river has been central to the lives and livelihoods of many in a country that has seen its share of conflict | podcast – coming soon | full article

Ever wonder what Southeast Asia looks like at night?  Below is a beautiful photographic depiction of this large geographical area.

Guangzhou, PRC
7 – 11 December 2009

GZ DOC endeavors to “bring China to the world and have the world know China” and has been developing itself towards an international, professional and market-oriented festival. Here are some SEA-related documentaries playing this year:

Untitled Life
Director: Shin Daewe
Burma / Yangon Film School 2008
synopsis

Diminishing Memories II
Dir. Eng Yee Peng
Singapore / Eng Yee Peng 2008
synopsis

Trails from the East, Episode Vietnam
Dir. Rob Hof Netherlands / Hoffilm 2007
synopsis
more info

Wednesday, 4 March 2009
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium

Love Conquers All
Directed by Tan Chui Mui
Malaysia, 2006, 90 minutes
Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese w/E.S.

Ah Peng is a Chinese-Malay girl from Penang. She comes to the capital Kuala Lumpur to work in the simple food stall run by her aunt. At first she doesn’t seem to have time for the joys and dangers of the big city. She doesn’t go looking for them either. She allows her new life to come at her the way it comes. And, she realizes, the way it comes is not always the way you want.

The role of Ah Peng is played by debutante Coral Ong Li Whei. The candour of the young actress matches wonderfully the way in which Ah Peng faces up to the unexpectedly harsh life of the capital. Ah Peng starts a beautiful friendship with her younger cousin Mei. They become like sisters. Mei maintains a secret correspondence with an unknown pen pal. It looks like a playful announcement of what is awaiting Ah Peng: a love that is not what it seems and is not what it should be.

Soon after her arrival in the city, Ah Peng is noticed and followed by John. The fact that she has a boyfriend in Penang does not stop him from pursuing his fairly aggressive advances. Ah Peng doesn’t really resist, nor for very long. Even when John unashamedly explains to her how a pimp works, she seems deaf to any warning. And equally imperturbably, with a minimal use of means, the film follows Ah Peng’s fate. – IFFR

LOVE CONQUERS ALL won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

“A delicate individual drama, which improves itself by the level and subtle relation that reality digital filming makes possible.” – Jean-Michel Frodon (chairman), Tikoy Aguiluz, Mabel Cheung, 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival

“Classical in style and structure, it is a film which speaks to the heart.” – Piers Handling (chairman), Lou Ye, Isaac Julien, Maria Kraakman, Teresa Villaverde, 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam

“The international Jury gives the award to Love Conquers All for its effective use of ambiguity and irony in constructing a surprising and subtly elliptical narrative.” – Francois Verster (chairman), Chris Fujiwara, Ana Katz, Jacqueline Veuve, Freddie Wong, 21st Fribourg International Film Festival

official website

Click play to listen to this lecture. Please note podcasts are not playable on mobile devices.

Tuesday, December 2, 12:00 p.m., Moore Hall 319 (Tokioka Room)
Presented by Dr. Jane M. Ferguson. Lecturer, Australia National University

In spite of Burma’s long and vibrant history of indigenous film production, critical material on the subject is extremely sparse. Similarly, within the critical material on the decades-long insurgency, popular culture consumption is an often overlooked dimension of the daily lives of ethnic insurgents and their affiliates. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in one such Shan community shows that in spite of – or even because of – the ongoing conflict, Burmese popular culture is symbolically relevant and richly meaningful…even amongst some of the most adamant of Shan separatists. In this presentation, Jane Ferguson will give an overview of the history, structure, and some of the popular genres of the Burmese motion picture industry, and then discuss dimensions of spectatorship of Burmese films in a village of Shan insurgents and their affiliates at the Thai-Burma border.

JANE M. FERGUSON lectures on Mainland Southeast Asian Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. Her interests includes nationalism, borderlands, popular culture, musical genres, digital media, Buddhist ritual and Burmese, Thai and Shan migration. Ferguson received her doctorate at Cornell University in May 2008 for her dissertation entitled Rocking in Shanland: Histories and Popular Culture Jams at the Thai-Burma Border. Ferguson’s publications include Rock Your Religion: Shan Merit-making, Ritual and Stage-show Revelry at the Thai-Burma Border in Asian Legacies and Inscriptions of the State (forthcoming) and Revolutionary Scripts: Shan Insurgent Media Practice at the Thai-Burma Border in Political Regimes and the Media in Asia: Continuities, Contradictions and Change.

Wednesday, 5 February
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium

A Yee Myint Production
Myanmar, 2005, 133 minutes
Burmese and English with English Subtitles

THE LEGEND OF LADY HILL is a Burmese supernatural melodrama. When young rich city boy, Tun, visits the town Lady Hill and impetuously flirts with the pretty village girl, Thuzar, he unknowingly disrupts a village spirit ceremony. When Thuzar’s husband dies in an accident that evening, she and the rest of the village believe it is the vengeful punishment of, Ma Ma U, the protective spirit who guards the village. Thuzar and angry villagers blame the recalcitrant Tun and chase him from the village.

Twenty years later the repercussions of this sad event are still being felt. When Tun’s son, La Min, visits the same village and meets the beautiful Pha-yaung Ban, all sorts of trouble befalls them. Have the spirits cursed this couple? Or are more terrestrial forces working to keep them apart?

THE LEGEND OF LADY HILL is a soap opera love story transfused with Buddhist ethics and Myanmar’s rich religious culture. Scenes rich with traditional music and religious ceremony should please those with an interest in Burmese culture. This film was subtitled as part of the University of Hawaii’s Southeast Asian Film Translation Project and is the first subtitled Burmese language film available for public viewing in the United States.