The Truth 24 Times Per Second

The Carsey-Wolf Center’s Spring 2019 screening series at UC Santa Barbara explores the international legacies of cinematic New Waves, including films from France, Cuba, China, Italy, and Iran. Whatever their disparate eras or sources, these selections share an emphasis on stylistic and narrative experimentation, a rejection of traditional film conventions, a sympathetic response to youth culture, an insistence on emotional verisimilitude, and a critical examination of contemporary social and political issues.

Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (France-Japan/1959), written by novelist Marguerite Duras, uses the post-war affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect as the basis for a poignant meditation on memory and forgetfulness. The two struggle with their differing perceptions of the Hiroshima bombing and its lingering effects, both societal and personal (one of which is the end of their affair). Resnais, a former editor, employs a dense, elliptical narrative structure that includes documentary footage and brief flashbacks to the lovers’ previous lives, among other innovations. Resnais was a generation older than Truffaut, Godard, and other French New Wave filmmakers, but his innovations proved influential on their work.

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (Cuba/1968) is a complex character study set in Havana during a period of social turmoil, between the Bay of Pigs invasion and the missile crisis. The protagonist, Sergio, is a wealthy bourgeois aspiring writer who elects to remain in Cuba after his wife and friends flee to Miami. Living a rootless existence in an atmosphere of anomie, Sergio is soon caught up in the social and political Cold War forces engulfing Cuba, and the post-revolution economic upheavals that are causing his privileged class to disappear. As in Renais’ film the narrative which unfolds is fragmented and highly subjective, in a style meant to evoke the process of memory and that requires active participation from the spectator.

Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (China, 1987), based on the novel by Nobel laureate Mo Yan, chronicles life in a rural Chinese village during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Though seemingly more conventional in style and narrative structure than other New Wave films, Red Sorghum shares its determination to challenge Hollywood conventions, eschewing ersatz sophistication and easy sentimentality in favor of simplicity and emotional directness, expressed in unromanticized depictions of poverty, sexual abuse, and sudden violence. The overall effect at times approaches a state not unlike magic realism. The film was also distinctive for its time and place in centering its story on a young girl, an emphasis which abetted a critique of Chinese society’s traditional sexual mores and treatment of women.

Though diverse in their blending of themes and techniques, what emerges from viewings of these and other New Wave films is a renewed sense of the cinema’s potential as a narrative art form, one illuminating aspects of the human condition far surpassing the boundaries of Hollywood storytelling.

Browse more programs in Carsey-Wolf Center.

U.S. and Chinese Grand Strategy

As the former Pacific Fleet Commander for the US Navy, Admiral Scott Swift has spent many years evaluating the United States’ strategy with China. In his view, the US has more in common with China than we have in competition, and competition is not always a bad thing. What does concern him is the erosion of the rules-based global order. Swift defines this global order as a set of rules established at multiple international conferences following WWII, and the institutions created to defend and update those rules, such as international courts.

Swift points to the Scarborough Shoal Standoff as an example of China defying the rules-based global order. In 2012, China and the Philippines got into a dispute over the rights to the Scarborough Shoal, a chain of reefs in the South China Sea. The dispute landed in an international court, which sided with the Philippines. However, China refused to recognize the court’s authority. Swift says China’s defiance sets a dangerous precedent.

As China continues to take its place on the global stage, Swift says one key to maintaining the global order is for the Unites States to develop a grand strategy. He says the key is starting with a broad vision of ourselves and our place in the world. Swift suggests taking inspiration from documents like the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and using language as broad as “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” From there, we can develop regional strategies, and ultimately policy to implement those strategies. But, Swift says before we do that, we have to fix the way we currently do things.

Watch U.S. and Chinese Grand Strategy and the Remaking of the Rules-Based Global Order – Herb York Memorial Lecture

Pathbreaking Environmental Initiatives

Over the past 30 years, arguably the most significant innovation in environmental policy has been the introduction of policy instruments that rely upon market forces to control pollution. You may know it as “cap-and-trade.” This policy debuted in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and has since spread from a focus on acid rain in the US to the development of carbon markets around the world. China is the most recent large emitter to announce a national carbon market.

This talk by Dan Dudek at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara reviews the major innovations of this policy tool, its migration around the world, and prospects for the future.

Dudek joined the Environmental Defense Fund in 1986. He has participated the development of several environmental initiatives including the Montreal Protocol, the US acid rain program, the Kyoto Protocol, and California’s AB-32. He has been an adviser and consultant to numerous governments and organizations. He has served on the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board; US EPA advisory committees; and on two councils that personally advise China’s Premier on environmental issues. He launched EDF’s China Program in 1995 to develop programs for the control of both conventional and greenhouse gas emissions. His work now focuses on India’s air quality problems.

Watch From the Adirondacks to Beijing: One Economist’s Journey.

The Pivot to Asia with Kurt Campbell and Susan Shirk

Kurt Campbell, Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, visits his Alma Mater, UC San Diego, to share some insight and some anecdotes from his political career.

Campbell, who is now Chairman and CEO of the The Asia Group, sits down with Susan Shirk, the chair of the 21st Century China Program and Ho Miu Lam Professor of China and Pacific Relations at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at UC San Diego, to discuss US relations with Asia and how that continent has garnered more attention than it has in the past.

When Campbell worked with Secretary Clinton in writing a statement predicting that the 21st century would be largely focused on Asian countries, their piece coined the phrase “pivot to Asia.” This phrase caught the attention of the international media, with some unintended consequences.

Hear Campbell explain the controversy and intentions behind the “pivot towards Asia” as well as the relations between China and Japan in “The Pivot to Asia with Kurt Campbell and Susan Shirk.”

See what other programs are available on International Affairs.