Film Screening:

Desert Dream
(Zhang Lu, 2007, 123 min, South Korea/France, in Mongolian and Korean with English subtitles, 35mm)

-- Introduced by Prof. Nayoung Aimee Kwon (AMES)
-- Q&A to follow with director Zhang Lu!

-- Preceded by a 6pm reception for director Zhang Lu, hosted by Duke East Asia Nexus (DEAN), in the Old Trinity Room, West Union Building!

Hungai lives with his family on the isolated Mongolian Steppes and is stubbornly devoted to the reforestation of the barren land that surrounds him. When his wife and daughter leave for the city, Hungai finds himself hosting a pair of North Korean refugees, Soonhee and her son Changho, who gradually fill familial roles in ways his own wife and daughter had not.

A frontier tale of a loner and his lost horizons, Desert Dream is a minimalist paradox mapped out in epic proportions, defining the borders that corral the desires and realities of self-styled nomads and settlers. Zhang Lu composes his ambitious epic with picture-book simplicity and rhythmic off-screen sound tapestries without surrendering the humanism of its drama.

Transnational North Korea: Migration and Urbanization

Curated by Prof. Nayoung Aimee Kwon, this film series will feature seven films Jan 23-April 4 and an all-day workshop on April 5. The series and workshop consider representations of North Korea framed in broader historical and geopolitical contexts of Northeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific.

[ Cine-East series website ]

Cost: Free and Open to the Public!

Sponsors: At Duke: Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI), Duke University Center for International Studies (DUCIS), Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute (DHRC@FHI), Women's Studies Program, Literature, the Korea Forum, and Duke East Asia Nexus (DEAN). At UNC: the Carolina Asia Center, Center for Global Initiatives, Asian Studies, Global Cinema Minor Program, and the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense.