Presented by the Centre for Cinema Studies and Cinema Thinks the World, the Critical Thinkers Series features research talks by notable and emerging scholars in Cinema and Media Studies. Join us for the next talk in the Fall 2025 Series by Dr. Su-Anne Yeo, Sessional Lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies, UBC.
The Trans-Asian Cine-Feminism of Julia Kwan’s Eve and the Firehorse (2005)
Produced twenty years ago in 2005, Eve and the Firehorse tells the story of two Chinese Canadian girls, Eve and Karena, coming of age in Vancouver in the 1980s. A Hong Kong-Canada co-production, the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to win the Special Jury Prize for World Cinema (Dramatic) at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006.
Drawing upon the work of film historian and film scholar Zhen Zhang and her recent book Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema (2023), this talk re-evaluates Eve and the Firehorse as a cinema project which centers both female imagination and Chinese diasporic experience. It asks, to what extent do films like Kwan’s contribute to what Zhang calls, “an intimate-public commons”?
About Dr. Su-Anne Yeo
Su-Anne Yeo researches and teaches in the areas of film studies, media studies, and cultural studies, with a specialization in Asian and Asian diasporic screen cultures. She completed a PhD in Media and Communications under the supervision of Professor Chris Berry at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2016 and is currently developing a monograph based on her thesis entitled, Alternative Screen Cultures in Asia Pacific, for Amsterdam University Press. Her output includes publications on various aspects of screen distribution and exhibition, and her book chapter, “Translating the Margins: New Asian Cinema, Independent Cinema, and Public Culture at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival,” from the edited collection, Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in spring 2017. Her most recent book chapter about the remediation of early cinematic practices within the site of the museum was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
This talk is presented in partnership with Asian Canadian and Asian Migration (ACAM) Studies.
This event is free and there is no need to RSVP.