Four East Asia-related Films (FYI)

Lucy Ostrander of Stourwater Pictures, a film producer in the Seattle area, has contacted me with information about her East Asia-related films, and requested that I pass on the information to East Asian librarians.  Below are short descriptions of four of her films, with links, FYI.

Rob Britt

Coordinator of East Asian Library Services

University of Washington

Gallagher Law Library

East Asian Law Department
rrbritt@uw.edu
Phone: 206-543-7447

Four East Asia-related Films Produced by Lucy Ostrander

The Revolutionary

Sidney Rittenberg arrived in China as a GI Chinese language expert at the end of World War II. Discharged there, he joined the Chinese Communist Party, and was an active participant in the Chinese communist revolution and its aftermath. An intimate of the Party's leadership, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, he gained prominence at the Broadcast Administration, one of the most important agencies of government. But in the convulsions of a giant country constantly reinventing itself, he twice ran afoul of the leadership, and served a total of 16 years in solitary confinement. He returned to the United States in 1980. THE REVOLUTIONARY is an intimate, unflinching account of Sidney Rittenberg's journey through the 20th century's biggest revolution. Produced by Stourwater Pictures, this award-winning 92-minute documentary is now being offered to academic institutions and libraries.

For more  information: http://revolutionarymovie.com/store.html

Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol

Stourwater Pictures, an independent documentary production company based near Seattle, WA has produced a number of films about the Asian American experience. Their recent film FUMIKO HAYASHIDA: THE WOMAN BEHIND THE SYMBOL starts as a historical portrait of Fumiko, her family and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community in the decades before World War II.  It develops as a contemporary story which follows 97-year-old Fumiko and her daughter Natalie as they return to the site of the former Minidoka internment camp, their first trip back together in 63 years. The film reveals how a 1942 iconic photograph became the impetus for Fumiko to publicly lobby against the injustices of the past.
For more information: http://www.stourwater.com/store.html

Honor and Sacrifice

Stourwater is currently completing their documentary HONOR AND SACRIFICE, a 27-minute documentary about the Japanese American men who were incarcerated in concentration camps, enlisted in the U.S. military, and volunteered to become linguists in the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific Theater of WWII.

For more information: http://www.stourwater.com/honor.html

Witness to revolution: The story of Anna Louise Strong
The daughter of a Nebraska minister, Anna Louise Strong earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Chicago. But it was in the Pacific Northwest, where she witnessed the 1916 Everett massacre and chronicled the 1919 Seattle General Strike, that her political vision took shape. In Moscow she helped found the first English language newspaper, in Spain her many visits resulted in her book, Spain in Arms; and in China she interviewed Mao in a Yenan cave in 1946. She is buried in Beijing in a special cemetery for martyrs of the revolution.
For more information: http://www.stourwater.com/store.html