Ateneo de Manila University, PHILIPPINES
26 to 28 November 2009
On 26 to 28 November 2009, the Philippines plays host, through the Ateneo de Manila University, to the 14th English in South East Asia (ESEA) Conference. This conference carries the theme “English Changing: Implications for policy, teaching, and research.”
The ESEA conference series is the result of collaboration between the National Institute of Education (Singapore), the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), the University of Brunei Darussalam, Curtin University (Perth, Australia), Ateneo de Manila University (Quezon City, the Philippines), Hong Kong Institute of Education, Sanata Dharma University (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), King Mongkut’s University of Technology (Thonburi, Thailand), and the University of Waikato (New Zealand).
Wednesday, 16 April
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium
Directed by Patrick Tam
Hong Kong/Malaysia, 2006, 120 minutes
Cantonese with English Subtitles
One of the leading filmmakers of the Hong Kong new wave of the early ’80s, Patrick Tam returns after a 15-year absence with his characteristic compassion and inventiveness intact. Set in 1990s Malaysia, Tam’s family drama dissects the troubled relationship between a loser father (Hong Kong superstar Aaron Kwok), who cooks in a cheap restaurant, and his son, who has the instincts of survival that his father has lost. Deserted by their wife and mother, the men drift across the thin line that divides survival from collapse. Fleeing from loan sharks, they move to a small town where the father encourages his son to rob houses, a scheme with predictably disastrous results. In contrast, the mother is now remarried and living a comfortable middle-class life. Some years later, the grown-up son returns to the place where he lost his innocence and where his future was intertwined, for better or worse, with his father’s fate. Like many filmmakers of his generation, Tam is shadowed by patriarchal complexities both on a personal level and in connotations of Hong Kong’s pre-’97 relationship with China. Tam masterly navigates the points of view of father and son to deliver a profound reflection on the split between the wisdom of maturity and the ambitions of youth.
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