Silk Screen Asian Arts & Culture Organization

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(SEWICKLEY, PA) –For a second year, Sewickley Academy will partner with Silk Screen – a Pittsburgh non-profit organization that celebrates Asian arts and culture through films, music, and dance – to present three films that challenge stereotypes. Each film will be followed by a moderated discussion lead by Sono Takano Hayes, a retired CMU professor who taught Japanese language and business culture for twenty years. She also arranged and assisted with all Japanese related events at the university’s international and Asian film festivals. In 2001, she received her Ph.D. in foreign language education from the University of Pittsburgh. Both her husband and son are alumni of Sewickley Academy.

 

All film screenings will take place in the academy’s Rea auditorium.

 

Wings of Defeat - 90 minutes

Saturday, January 9, at 2 pm / Rea Auditorium

Japanese society still reveres WWII Kamikaze as self-sacrificing heroes. Internationally, they remain a potent symbol of fanaticism. Until now, few outsiders knew that many Kamikaze survived their suicide missions. The candid, heartbreaking testimony of surviving Kamikaze conveys the true depth of war's travesty. Now 60 years later, these humble men relay the horrors of the cockpit, their dramatic endurance, and the guilt that still haunts them as survivors. (Parental discretion is advised.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They Chose China - 52 minutes

Saturday, Frebruary 25, at 7 pm / Rea Auditorium

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Shuibo Wang (Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square) depicts the astonishing story of 21 American soldiers who opted to stay in China after the Korean War ended in 1954. Meanwhile in the U.S., McCarthyism was at its height and many Americans believed the Chinese communists brainwashed these men. But what really happened? Using unreleased footage from the Chinese camps and interviews with former POWs and their families, They Chose China tells the stories of these forgotten American dissidents. (Parental discretion is advised.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lakshmi and Me - 59 minutes

Sunday, January 29, at 2 pm / Rea Auditorium

Lakshmi is a 21-year-old housemaid in Mumbai. One of her employers, Nishtha Jain, begins to make a documentary that explores their relationship. Nishtha films Lakshmi at home and at work in various houses. Problems of illness and romance compound Lakshimi’s precarious existence in unexpected ways. As Nishtha delves deeper into Lakshmi's life, she is forced to question many of the things she takes for granted. A year and a half of filming captures the dramatic changes in their lives and has its own impact on the unfolding events and developing relationship between the two women.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALL SEWICKLEY SERIES PROGRAMS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

For more information and to register for these films, please visit www.sewickley.org/sewickleyseries or contact Silk Screen:

 

Phone: 724-969-2565

Email: Info@silkscreenfestival.org

 

Download this press release:

 

 

Silk Screen is a 501C3 arts and culture organization, whose mission is to promote diversity and cross-cultural understanding of Asia through the arts.

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Founded in 1838, Sewickley Academy is Pittsburgh’s oldest independent school. A premier coeducational, collegepreparatory day school, Sewickley Academy enrolls 800 students in prekindergarten through grade 12. For more information, visit www.sewickley.org.