Rae Chang and Adam TowScreening:  AUTUMN GEM  Event: Tuesday Oct. 27, 2009Writer/Director Rae Chang comes to NYWIFT this month for a screening of her film Autumn Gem, which
explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese heroine Qiu Jin. An
accomplished writer, women's rights activist and revolutionary army
leader, Qiu Jin boldly challenged traditional gender roles and demanded
equal rights and opportunities for women. An Asian "Joan of Arc," she
emerged as a national heroine who redefined what it meant to be a woman
in early 20th-century China. Chang will be joined by her colleague Adam Tow, Amy Dooling, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Connecticut College, and Ann Lau, Chair of the Visual Artists Guild in Los Angeles, for a Q&A after the screening.Rae Chang (writer/director)
is an artist and graphic designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Her varied works (in drawing, sculpture, performance and video) have
been presented at Kearny Street Workshop's APAture, the Chinese Culture
Center, Worth Ryder Art Gallery and the New College of California
Gallery. Trained in Chinese martial arts (wushu), she performs with the
dance company Facing East Dance and Music. Her short film on Qiu Jin, Jingwei Girls,
was presented at APAture Film Night in 2003 and the Women of Color Film
Festival in 2004. Chang also works as a graphic designer for various
internet companies. Ann Lau,
Chair of the Visual Artists Guild Los Angeles, has worked with human
rights organizations around the world to secure the release of
prisoners of conscience. She won the Securities and Exchange
Commission's approval to bring a stockholders' resolution against a
technology company, and her actions against Cisco Systems in 2002 and
2003 led to actions by 25 investment companies, the City of New York
and others against Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Yahoo!. Her
work resulted in the Global Online Freedom Act, a new bill preventing
U.S. technology companies from assisting repressive regimes in their
efforts to identify and punish activists on the Internet. Adam Tow is a digital media producer and web consultant. An accomplished photographer, his work has been published in The New York Times, Stanford Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.
He has worked with such artists as Vienna Teng, the St. Lawrence String
Quartet, Facing East Dance and Music, Beijing Wushu Team, and Somei
Yoshino Taiko Ensemble. Tow also runs his own technology consulting
business. His corporate clients have included The Wall Street Journal, AllThingsD.com, Stanford University, Palm, and various startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. Windows 7: Simplify your PC. Learn more.