January 18: View the classic Japanese film “Gion Bayashi” at IMA

Watch “Gion Bayashi,” a classic of Japanese cinema, then head upstairs to see the IMA's remarkable collection of Japanese art and pottery

When: Thursday January 18, 7:00 PM
Where: Indianapolis Museum of Art, DeBoest Lecture Hall


This classic Japanese film (1953, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 85 mins) follows the training and daily life of a young geisha and her mentor in the Gion district of Kyoto. The movie, a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of geisha, is in Japanese with English subtitles. Presented by the Asian Art Society. Summary:

In the post-war Gion district of Kyoto, the geisha Miyoharu agrees to apprentice
the 16 year-old Eiko, whose mother was a former geisha who had just died. After
a year of training they have to find a large sum of money before Eiko can debut.
Miyoharu borrows the money from the tea-house owner, Okimi, who in turn obtains
the money from the businessman Kusuda. Kusuda fancies Eiko himself and wants to
give Miyoharu to Kanzaki in order to close a large business deal. However both
geishas have minds of their own and, going against tradition, want to be able to
say no to clients.

The film explores the clash of pre-war traditionalism in the pleasure quarters with the new atmosphere of individual liberty and equal rights for women in post-war Japan.

The film showing is free. Make sure you view the IMA's excellent collection of Japanese art, including ceramics, lacquer ware, woodblock prints, sculpture and paintings, and one of the finest collections of Edo-period painting in the U.S. The collection also offers contemporary ceramics by Japan's leading artists.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out the equally classic Japanese film Kaidan on April 28 as part of the IMA's series of films that have inspired the Cuban artist Magdalena Maria Campos-Pons. And definitely attend the Indianapolis International Film Festival April 25 to May 4.

Return to IndyBuzz List of Events for Spring

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Visit IndyBuzz's sister site "Views-PRI" for an essay that connects many of the events related to Asian economy and culture: "China, Japan, Indiana: Eastern and Midwestern Cultures Mingle."

January 20: Watch high school brainiacs do battle at the Academic WorldQuest Tournament

Qualifying competition for an Indianapolis high school team of geniuses to represent the city in a national tournament of international knowledge and (let's be honest) trivia

When: Saturday January 20 1:00 PM
Where: Marian College Stokely Mansion 3200 Cold Spring Road

Academic WorldQuest is widely played at the adult and high school levels around the country. It is a team game testing competitors' knowledge of international affairs, geography, history, and culture. You can find out about it here. The World Affairs Councils of America holds a national competition for high schools in DC in April. Last year the Indiana Council on World Affairs sponsored a team from Lawrence North High School ... despite it being their first exposure to the compeition, they did very well. (LNHS: More than just basketball.) This year there will be a competition at Marian College to select the representative to the DC tournament. It will be grueling, check out last year's questions. IndyBuzz has a dream of staging a WorldQuest tournament for all comers in Indianapolis next year, let's check out the competition at Marian College on January 20.

Stretch your brain with questions from last year's Academic WorldQuest. If you plan to attend, please contact Janet Jegen by email or phone (849-2691) so that there will be enough chairs and refreshments for everyone.

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March 27: Visit with Visiting Writer Jane Hirshfield

March 27
Visiting Writer Jane Hirshfield
7:30PM - 10:30PMButler University Robertson Johnson Room

Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City in 1953. After receiving her B.A. from Princeton University in their first graduating class to include women, she went on to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. Her books of poetry include After (HarperCollins, 2006); Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Lives of the Heart (1997), The October Palace (1994), Of Gravity & Angels (1988), and Alaya (1982).
She is the author of Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and has also edited and translated The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (1990) with Mariko Aratani and Women in Praise of the Sacred: Forty-Three Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (1994).

About her work, the poet Rosanna Warren has said: "Hirshfield has elaborated a sensuously philosophical art that imposes a pause in our fast-forward habits of mind. Her poems appear simple, and are not. Her language, in its cleanliness and transparency, poses riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature.... Clause by clause, image by image, in language at once mysterious and commonplace, Hirshfield's poems clear a space for reflection and change. They invite ethical awareness, and establish a delicate balance."

Her honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, Columbia University's Translation Center Award, the Commonwealth Club of California Poetry Medal, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets. In addition to her work as a freelance writer and translator, Hirshfield has taught at UC Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and been Elliston Visiting Poet at the University of Cincinnati.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out another example of poetry crossing borders at the special performance of painting, music, and poetry with Master Au and Indianapolis Opera Valentine's Day.

Return to IndyBuzz List of Events for Spring

Return to IndyBuzz Themes for Events in the Spring

Visit IndyBuzz's sister site "Views-PRI" for an essay that connects many of the events related to Asian economy and culture: "China, Japan, Indiana: Eastern and Midwestern Cultures Mingle."

April 28: Watch three films that inspired María Magdalena Campos-Pons

Take in one or more of these gems of international cinema selected by artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons for their influence on her work.

When: April 28 11:00 AM;
The Body Films: A One-Day Series
DeBoest Lecture Hall
Free

11:00 am
L’Age d’or (dir. Luis Buňuel, 1930, 60 mins.)
L’Age d’Or was a follow up to Buňuel’s collaboration with Salvador Dali: Un Chien Andalou, a groundbreaking surrealist film that opens with a razor slicing the eyeball of a woman. L’Age d’Or details the sexual and social frustrations of a couple prevented from consummating their love by their families, the Church and society. According to Buňuel, Dali wrote that the film was about “the impossible force that thrusts two people together [and] the impossibility of their ever becoming one.” At the opening of the film in Paris in 1930, fascists led a violent protest of the film’s fetishism and blasphemy. Critic Michael Atkinson called L’Age d’Or “subversive culture's seminal anthem film.”

12:45 pm
Kaidan (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964, 125 mins.)
Nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 1965, Kaidan is a collection of four different ghost stories, drawn from Japanese folktales. These quasi-horror stories feature a snow witch, a blind musician and a lovelorn samurai. The Kobayashi, a student of Asian art, explores common ground between traditional Japanese visual arts and cinematic expression. The work is a “visually ravishing film that uses dazzling color palettes and carefully composed widescreen photography to bring the viewer into an entirely supernatural world,” writes critic James Kendrick.

3:00 pm
Blow-Up (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, 111 mins.)
A detached, aimless London fashion photographer wanders into a park where he photographs what may be a murder. Antonini’s classic thriller was the highest grossing art film of that date, gaining Oscar nominations for screenplay and direction. Blow-Up is a film about illusion, seduction and ennui—a zeitgeist of the swinging sixties—that also toys with the subjectivity of artist, object, and perception.

If this event sounds interesting, you really have to check out the spectacular Indianapolis International Film Festival ... in fact, it's going on during this screening at IMA.

Return to IndyBuzz List of Events for Spring
Return to IndyBuzz Themes for Events in the Spring

Visit IndyBuzz's sister site "Views-PRI" for an essay that connects many of the events related to Asian economy and culture: "China, Japan, Indiana: Eastern and Midwestern Cultures Mingle."

April 25- May 4: Make a priority to attend the marvelous Indianapolis International Film Festival

April 25- May 4
Indianapolis International Film Festival