Contributors

Philip Cheah is the Festival Director of the Singapore International Film Festival and the editor of BigO, Singapore's independent pop culture publication. He is also Advisory Board Member and contributor to Cinemaya, Asia's film critics quarterly and Board Member of NETPAC (Network for the promotion of Asian Cinema). He has co-edited And the Moon Dances: The Films of Garin (2004), Noel Vera’s Critic After Dark: A Review of Philippine Cinema (2005) and the upcoming Modernity and Nationality in Vietnamese Cinema by Ngo Phuong Lan (2007).

Scriptwriter, author, editor, scholar, professor, producer, administrator, Ms. Chiao as she is widely known, is in every way an exceptional personality in the world of cinema.

Forthright, dynamic and optimistic, Ms. Chiao is at her versatile best at her writing. Her range and interests are extraordinarily rich and far-flung, embracing much more than an examination of the cinemas of Taiwan and China in the many reviews, anthologies and books she has written and edited. They cover, among many other subjects, the French New Wave, Mainstream and Contemporary Cinema, Musicals, Arts and National Cinema and Encounters with Great Directors.

Her work as an editor is even more astonishing in its scope and reach. This year alone, Ms. Chiao is editing four series comprising 32 books on subjects as diverse as film history, theory, analysis, screenwriting, sex and violence as well as the cinemas of numerous directors - Asian, American and European. She has also won two prestigious international awards: the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and Top Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival.

As a distinguished scholar and professor, she has taught art history, criticism and creative filmmaking in several universities around the world. As an administrator, she is the Founder-Chairman of the Taiwan Film Centre, and currently heads leading production companies. Her indefatigable work as a producer has yielded over a dozen films, most of them winners of prestigious awards at international festivals. She has served as the Director of the Taipei Film Festival and the Taipei International Film Festival, and founded the China Express Film Award in 1987.

Benefactor, promoter of Taiwanese films at a time of tremendous historical change for the island nation, shrewed analyst of trends and talent, crusader for the cause of cinema, Ms. Chiao is truly a living legend. She entered the scene when cinema in her country was in a quagmire, and films, even award-winning ones, were faring poorly at home. If Taiwanese chinema which, as she has said, cannot rely on the local market alone, has entered limelight days and is innovative and universally celebrated, it is thanks in no small measure to the rock-solid and dedicated work done by Ms. Chiao.

Jay Hubert hails from Houston, Texas, but has spent over half of the last 10 years studying, working, traveling, taking photographs, and making films in Asia. Hubert graduated from Rice University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Asian Studies, and recently finished his M.A. in Asian Studies with a China focus at the University of Hawai‘i. Hubert is currently studying cinematography at the Beijing Film Academy fully-funded by a U.S. government FLAS scholarship. He has written, directed, produced, shot, and/or acted in over 15 short films and two feature films; 6 of them have screened at the Hawaii International Film Festival, where his Chinese- language short film Dao recently won a Special Jury Award. Several of his other films have screened at various international film festivals and academic conferences in North America and Asia. Hubert is fluent in Japanese and Mandarin, and conversant in Cantonese and Korean.

Ms. Ngo Phuong Lan's latest ground-breaking book, Modern and Nationality in Vietnam's Cinematography was named the 2005 winner of the Canh Dieu Van (Golden Kite) Award, which is the most prestigious film award given in Vietnam to a film publication. The award is the latest in a series of honors and recognition given to her for her outstanding scholarly work about Vietnam film culture. She graduated with a degree in Film Theory / Criticism in Moscow at Gerasimov All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (commonly known as VGIK), the world's oldest educational institution in cinematography, founded in 1919. Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Aleksey Batalov were among VGIK's most distinguished professors. Her studies culminated with a Ph.D. from Hanoi University where her thesis was on on Culture and Arts Studies in Vietnam.

She is co-author of several books on cinema in Vietnamese including Famous Film Directors in the World, Cinema and National Identity, and Vietnamese Film Actors and Actresses. Her book, The Companion to the Screen, was awarded the first prize of the Vietnam Cinema Association for Film Criticism in 1998. Her essays, film criticisms, and reviews are widely read in newspapers, film magazines, journals, and in various cinema books in Europe and Australia. Her latest book is currently being translated into English by NETPAC and will be launched world-wide later this year. Ngo Phuong Lan has served on film festival juries throughout Asia and is often asked to give her opinion regarding Vietnamese cinema on panels and in seminars throughout the world. She is the Head of the Art Management Section at the Vietnam Cinema Department; Member of the Central Committee of Motion Picture Approval; and Chairperson, Committee of Theory and Criticism of the Vietnam Cinema Association.

Dr. Sun is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and Associate Director of Center for Media Policy Studies at Shanghai University. Currently, he teaches Chinese literature, film, and culture in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. He was the webmaster and, with Jeannette Hereniko, a developer of the original “Asian Film Connections” at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California. He is on the Board of Directors of NETPAC/USA and has served on juries selecting NETPAC Award winner in several international film festivals.

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Dr. Sun received his first M.A. in Modern Chinese Literature from Nanjing University in 1991, and his second M.A. in Film Studies from the University of Southern California in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Asian literature and film from the University of Southern California in 1999. He has published and translated a number of articles and books on Chinese film and literature in the United States, China, and Taiwan, including the Chinese translation of Rey Chow's Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (2001, Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co.) and New Perspectives on Media Policies in the West (2005, Shanghai: Joint Publishing House). Dr. Sun’s forthcoming book Voices of China’s Sixth Generation of Filmmakers (New York: EastBridge) is an extensive coverage and analysis of the young directors of contemporary China.

Aruna Vasudev is one of the world's foremost authorities on Asian cinema. Shortly after receiving a PhD from the University of Paris from her studies on censorship and cinema, she became a filmmaker and film critic. Since establishing Cinemaya, the Asian Film Quarterly (Founding Editor); NETPAC - Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (Founding President); Osian's CineFan Film Festival in New Delhi (Founding Director); and writing and editing several important books on Asian cinema, she has been recognized as a leading force behind the promotion of Asian cinema. In recognition of her work, she has served on countless film festival juries; received lifetime achievement awards from several film festivals in Asia; and been conferred with France's top cultural award, the Chevallier des Arts et Lettres .

Dr. Dorothy Wong teaches in the Department of Translation at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Hong Kong. She has published widely on literature, cinema, and culture of Hong Kong. She co-authored the book Ashes of Time with Wimal Dissanayake. It was published by the Hong Kong University press.

Prof. Ming Bao Yue teaches Chinese film and art at the University of Hawai'i where she is a noted authority on 20th century Chinese film and literature. Prof. Yue's other research areas include comparative literacy criticism, post-colonialism, feminism and cultural studies. She also writes on Asian-American literature and film.