Wednesday, 15 September at 2:00 pm in Moore 319 (Tokioka Room)
Presented by Dr. Takeshi Kawanaka, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Developing
Economies

Although the Philippines started the “third wave” of democratization in Asia, its democracy has been perceived as unstable. The country experienced not a few coup attempts, scandals of the Presidents, and large scale rallies on the street. Even elections, a fundamental democratic solution to the conflicts in the society, have not been able to gain the confidence of the people due to various frauds. In the 2010 elections, Noynoy Aquino, son of the two national “heroes” of democratization, was elected new President. Did the 2010 elections bring the hope for democratic consolidation? Or was the same old game merely repeated? We will try to assess the impact of the 2010 Philippine elections.

TAKESHI KAWANAKA is Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Developing Economies, Japan. His research interests are in political institutions and political economy of new democracies. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Kobe University, and conducted research at the University of the Philippines, Stanford University, and Ateneo de Manila University as visiting scholar.

National Foreign Language Resource Center Fall 2010 Demos and Discussions
Wednesday, October 13, 12:00 pm in Moore 258
Presented by Pia Arboleda, Assistant Professor of Filipino and Philippine Literature at the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures

Literary texts and films are excellent tools for teaching language and culture. However, for heritage learners, Tagalog texts and Filipino films without subtitles are incomprehensible. Thus, there is a great need for translation and subtitling in order to produce bilingual materials. But the process of translation itself can be used as a tool to teaching Philippine language and culture. This presentation will explain the course design and method of teaching Filipino 435: Translation Theory and Practice. In this course students are asked to transcibe the original text in Filipino. This process hones their listening skills. Next, student conduct research on the historical and cultural background of the film or text they are translating. The process of translation allows them to apply the translation theories they have learned and to exercise critical and creative thought in order to produce an accurate and effective translation.

The presentation includes samples of bilingual materials like film clips, song adaptations, and digital storybooks and how they are used in the classroom.

contact Jim Yoshioka @ sltcc@hawaii.edu | more info

Dr. PIA ARBOLEDA is assistant professor of Filipino and Philippine Literature at the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures where she teaches ‘Translation Theory and Practice,’ ‘Philippine History and Culture,’ and ‘Philippine Folklore.’ She received her doctorate degree in Language and Literature from De La Salle University, Manila. Prior to joining University of Hawaii at Manoa, she taught Philippine Literature, Language and History at Osaka University for four and a half years. She has translated and subtitled Raymond Red’s “Sakay” and Jon Red’s “Ilusyon.” Dr. Arboleda is now working on the translation and subtitles of Eddie Romero’s “Noli Me Tangere” 13-episode TV series. She is also a poet and creative writer. Her works have appeared in ‘Forbidden Fruit: Women Write the Erotic,’ ‘Kung Ibig Mo: Love Poetry by Women,’ and ‘Essays on Women’, among others.

Wednesday, 1 September
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium

Philippines 2003 (120 min)
Tagalog with English subtitles
Dir: Maryo J. De Los Reyes
Screenplay: Michiko Yamamoto
Cast: Lorna Tolentino, Albert Martinez, Gloria Romero, Celia Rodriguez, Mark Gil, Tonton Gutierrez, Jiro Manio, Amy Austria, Cherry Pie Picache, Isabella de Leon

Inay (Lorna Tolentino) speaks for many when she says, ”Life is a never-ending misery.”

Her 7-year-old daughter, Helen (Isabella de Leon), has cerebral palsy, has never spoken a word and requires as much care as an infant. Her teenage son has lost his scholarship and come home from Manila to an uncertain future. Her other son, 9-year-old Magnifico (Jiro Manio), doesn’t show much promise beyond being a really sweet kid. Her beaten-down husband (Albert Martínez) has been working on the same Rubik’s cube for a year.

And she has just learned that her mother-in-law, who lives with them, has pancreatic cancer. That’s one more helpless person to care for, and they have no idea where they’re going to get the 30,000 pesos or so (several months’ salary for a schoolteacher, we are told) it will take to bury her.

But the hopefully named Magnifico, in the tradition of omniscient innocents in international films, is determined to help — and to charm everyone the way movie characters occasionally do, just by treating impending death matter-of-factly. He sets out to earn enough money for his grandmother’s funeral, buy her a beautiful white dress to be buried in and gather enough scrap wood to build the coffin himself. But this drama isn’t as maudlin as it sounds, thanks to the leading actors’ fine, understated performances. (Anita Gates, New York Times)

Magnifico was awarded Best Feature Film at the Hawaii International Film Festival (2003) and the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk Grand Prix at the Berlin International Film Festival (2004). It is being shown here with a new subtitle track produced by Brigida Schmidt, a student in our Spring 2010 subtitling course.

IMDB | Wikipedia | NYTimes Review | Film Otaku Review | Download Poster

To reassess the complex interconnections between Brecht’s work and various Asian cultures at the beginning of the 21st century, the International Brecht Society (IBS) and the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa invite scholars and artists in theater, performance, and other cultural fields to Honolulu for the 13th IBS Symposium on “Brecht in/and Asia” from May 19-23, 2010.

Brecht was not the only Western modernist to turn to Asian theater and thought for inspiration, but he was an especially astute observer of the cultural encounter with this “other,” which had such a significant impact on his work. Conversely, Brecht’s own theater and thought returned to inspire new forms of political and aesthetic experiments in many parts of Asia. With the dynamic, ongoing echoes of this mutual relationship as point of departure, the symposium will provide a forum to explore its multiple dimensions.

Below are the Southeast Asian focused panels:

Fritz Bennewitz’s Caucasian Chalk Circle in the Philippines
Thursday, May 20 at 3:45 pm in Webster Hall 103
Presented by David G. John, University of Waterloo, Ontario

Linking with the previous presentations by Rolf Rohmer and Joerg Esleben, this paper will first outline former GDR director Fritz Bennewitz’s long association with Philippine theatre through his interactions with indigenous theatre practitioners there, and especially his collaboration with the Philippine Education Theatre Association (PETA) in producing many plays. It will then focus on his 1977 production, with local actors and collaborators, of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, in Tagalog (Ang Hatol na Bilog na Guhit), staged in Manila with thematic and stylistic connections to the southern Philippine region of Mindanao and its Muslim culture. Bennewitz asserted frequently that this play was an ideal vehicle for mutual intercultural exploration and understanding. Although judged by Philippine critics to be the country’s best production of the year, questions need to be asked as to whether or not it was indeed a successful intercultural venture from points of view then and now.

Since 1974 David John has been Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His major book publications focus on eighteenth-century German theatre, Goethe and Schiller, and he has just completed a book on Fritz Bennewitz’s seven productions of Faust in various countries. He is currently involved in an international collaborative project on Bennewitz in India.

In Contestation over Hegemonic Narrative: Kamron’s Brechtian Theatre and Beyond
Thursday, May 20 at 11:00 am in Webster Hall 103
Presented by Parichat Jungwiwattanaporn, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

During seventy-eight years of parliamentary democracy (1932 – 2010), Thai democratization has gone through a number of significant challenges including coup d’états and the recent call by neo-nationalist royalists for a semi-absolute monarchy. The hegemony of the national ideology of the “Three Pillars” (i.e., nation, religion/Buddhism, and the King) has been so deeply imbedded in the Thai consciousness that any attempt to question the meta-narratives of Thai history can be construed as an act against national security. Since open discussions and criticism about these meta-narratives have been legally, socially, and culturally repressed, live theatre has become an important tool for contemporary artists in Thailand to express their dissent and to create a space in which they can interact live with an audience. For the past three decades, the Crescent Moon Theatre Group (CMTG), led by Kamron Gunatilaka, has been known to use both Thai and Western theatre techniques, especially the Brechtian theatre, to articulate dissent. In countering different meta-narratives, his productions take great risk at criticizing the hegemonic social memory, history, and collective psyche of Thailand. This paper will be a case study of Kamron’s most important production, The Revolutionist, which has been the most frequently performed contemporary theatre production in Thailand since 1987. Thai theatre critics consider it one of the most important Thai plays of the 20th century. The Revolutionist, inspired by Brechtian theatre, depicts a story of the leader of the Thai revolution in 1932, Pridi Banomyong, a progressive intellectual who fell victim to political intrigues. The play also provides historical details that provide a counter-metanarrative to the well-known metanarratives of recent Thai history. Through Lyotard’s postmodern lens, this paper intends to analyze the influences of Brechtian elements in Kamron’s dramaturgy as well as the creative outcomes that resulted from using this approach.

Parichat Jungwiwattanaporn is a PhD candidate in Asian Theatre at the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Since 1999, as a researcher and writer on theatre history and criticism in Thailand, she has participated in a national research project, “Criticism as an Intellectual Power in Contemporary Thai Society.” Her publications include three co-authored books and two books on Thai Contemporary Theatre and Criticism, as well as a number of articles for such journals as ATJ and SPAFA and various newspapers.

Taken by Cars, usually referred to as TbC, is a Filipino indie rock band composed of Sarah Marco on vocals, Bryce Zialcita on lead guitar, Derek “Siopao” Chua on rhythm guitar, Isa Garcia on bass guitar, and Bryan Kong on drums and sampler. They describe their sound as a mixture of electro, shoegaze, and new wave.

Zialcita, Chua, Yap, and Kong, who have been friends since elementary school, formed a rock band in 1998 when they were high school sophomores. In an interview with Philippine Daily Inquirer, Zialcita said that their only goal was to play gigs in saGuijo, a café in Makati City, Philippines, which caters to indie rock enthusiasts. They performed during their high school and college days under different names like “Kung Fu Benny,” “Mexican Rice Bowl,” and “Morning Wood” until finally deciding on the name “Taken by Cars” because of its association with the concept of movement and that they “listened to a bulk of their music in their cars.”  They also tried out several music genres before settling into its “classic rock-modern indie vibe” when Marco joined the group in 2006. However, after just one month of gigging in small audiences using original materials, the band took a hiatus due to what they described as “personal reasons.” They made most out of this idle time writing and recording new songs in preparation for their return. Without a major record label to promote them, the band uploaded their music on MySpace, where they garnered fans from different parts of the world.

Taken by Cars returned to scene in early 2007 and have become notable in Manila’s indie rock scene that fans began to compel local radio stations for them to play the band’s first single, “A Weeknight Memoir (In High Definition).” On February 2007, the band submitted a demo copy of the single to NU 107, a rock music station in Pasig City, Metro Manila, for its segment “In the Raw.” Despite its less-than-perfect audio quality, “A Weeknight Memoir (In High Definition)” received heavy radio airplay and has even reached the top spot of NU 107’s daily countdown. Their next single, “Uh Oh,” also reached number one in the station’s charts.

The band’s appeal has gotten noticed by Warner Music Philippines, which signed the group to a distribution deal. Their debut album, Endings of a New Kind, was released in early 2008 under the production of Mong Alcaraz, who is also behind the music of Sandwich and Chicosci. Endings of a New Kind was received warmly by critics and fans. Entertainment writer Diego Rosano P. Mapa reviewed that he “can hear Bloc Party, CSS and New Young Pony Club in their music, but they are doing something that sounds different and refreshing. The drums party like a drum machine, the riffs are shimmering, the basses distorted like an analog keyboard, and Sarah Marco’s vocals are gonna rip all the men’s boxer shorts to shreds.” The album also includes a download card that provides access to remixed versions of its tracks. They also released a mashup version of “Uh Oh” entitled “Uh Oh It’s Electro,” which was collaborated with house DJ Funk Avy. They are working on their second album, which will be released in late 2009. -taken from wikipedia.org

Nike+ Article | Wilyfilapino Interview | Myspace | Last.fm | Multiply | Odyssey Live

The course will cover art and architecture of tribal groups from island Southeast Asia. Topics include bronze age prehistory and indigenous cultures from Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Course information: Summer Session II: 6 July – 13 Aug 2010, M-F 10:30 – 11:45am, 3 credits

Jerome Feldman teaches art history at Hawaii Pacific University. His specialization is in the arts of tribal Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. He received his Ph.D. in tribal art history from Columbia University and has conducted field studies in remote islands of Indonesia and Polynesia. He has studied museum collections in Europe and America and has aided in several important exhibitions including The Eloquent Dead at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Nias Tribal Treasures at the Volkenkundig Meumeu Nusantara in Delft, and Beyond the Java Sea a Smithsonian sponsored traveling exhibition. He has also written books and articles and lectured extensively on tribal Southeast Asian, Micronesian and Polynesian art and architecture. In fall 2004, he was the Slade Visiting Professor at Cambridge University, England. between distribution patterns of human knowledge of biodiversity and actual biodiversity.

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.

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

Philippines, 2007 (118 min)
Tagalog with English subtitles
Dir: Auraeus Solito
Cast: Carl John Barrameda, Elijah Castillo, E.J. Jallorina, Alfred Labatos, Annicka Dolonius, Gammy Lopez, Jonathan Neri, Shayne Fajutagana

Two years after the debut of Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005), director Auraeus Solito returned to the Cinemalaya Film Festival with Pisay (Philippine Science), where it won the Audience Choice Award for best film. The film’s title is culled from the term of endearment Filipinos have for the Philippine Science High School, a top government-funded educational institution whose curriculum is geared to training young minds for careers in science. Pisay follows the lives of eight teenagers as they go through the joys and pains of adolescence while living through the People Power days of revolt against Ferdinand Marcos.

Solito again breaks the boundaries of a condensed social unit into endearing elements that showcase very universal themes. A class of ‘86 grad of the school, Solito understands the power of his medium; that it’s not enough to dwell in the gorgeous memories of a happily spent past, there has to be something much more pertinent to be told in his accurate dioramas of high school life. The vivid transformation of his characters is not only touching, it is also moving.

-Francis Cruz

IMDB Website | Philippine School System (Wikipedia) | Pinoy Film Review | Download Poster

ASAN 310 is a multidisciplinary examination of literature, philosophy, and religion shaping Asian beliefs and values. We use film, video, novels, short stories, lectures, discussion and student writing to access cultures, histories and peoples of selected societies in East, South and Southeast Asia. Students will read novels about Indonesia (by Pramoedya Ananta Toer), China (by Wang Shuo), and India) by Farahad Zamar). We will also engage shorter works by writers from the Philippines, Okinawa and other countries. Students will write short weekly papers. Semester activities include a field trip to the Honolulu Academy of Arts. ASAN 310 will be valuable for students in any major or professional field who wish to gain a deeper understanding of—and empathy with—a range of Asian cultures.

Course information: Summer Session I: 24 May – 2 July 2010, M-F 10:30 – 11:45am, 3 credits

Vincent K. Pollard earned his graduate degrees at The University of Chicago and the University of Hawai‘i-Manoa. He has also been affiliated with the former Kansai Gaidai Hawaii College, the University of the Philippines-Diliman, and East China Normal University. To learn more about Pollard’s teaching, research and other professional activities, visit his website.