MediAsia2017


The Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2017 (MediAsia2017). Photography by IAFOR Media. Image copyright © IAFOR 2017

The Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2017 | Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Art

"History, Story, Narrative"

October 27-29, 2017 | Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Art & Art Center Kobe, Kobe, Japan

Historians are far from the only interested party in writing history. In a sense it is an interest we all share – whether we are talking politics, region, family birthright, or even personal experience. We are spectators to the process of history while being intimately situated within its impact and formations.

How, then, best to write it? Is it always the victor’s version? Have we not begun increasingly to write “history from below”, that lived by those who are not at the top of the power hierarchy? Are accounts of history always gender-inflected, hitherto, at least, towards men rather than women? Who gets to tell history if the issue is colonialism or class? How does geography, the power of place, intersect with history? What is the status of the personal story or narrative within the larger frame of events?

This conference addresses issues of writing history from literary and other discursive perspectives. That is to say: novels, plays, poems, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, travel logs and a variety of styles of essay. One thinks of Shakespeare’s history plays, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Shi Nai’an’s The Water Margin, Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine. It also addresses oral history, the spoken account or witness, the Hiroshima survivor to the modern Syrian migrant.

Which also connects to the nexus of media and history. The great “historical” films continue to hold us, be it Eisenstein’s October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1925) or Gone with the Wind (1940). We live in an age of documentaries, whether film or TV. There is a view that we also inhabit “instant” history, the download to laptop, the app, the all-purpose mobile. How has this technology changed our perception, our lived experience, of history? What is the role of commemoration, parade, holiday, festival or statuary in the writing of history?

The different modes by which we see and understand history, flow and counter-flow, nevertheless come back to certain basics.

One asks whether we deceive ourselves in always asking for some grand narrative. Can there only be one narrator or is history by necessity a colloquium, contested ground? Is national history a myth? And history-writing itself: is it actually a form of fiction, an artifice which flatters to deceive? What, exactly, is a historical fact?

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Programme

  • History, Story, Narrative: An Introduction to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
    History, Story, Narrative: An Introduction to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
    Special Address: Yutaka Mino
  • Introduction of Osaka University’s Global News View Database
    Introduction of Osaka University’s Global News View Database
    Featured Address: Virgil Hawkins
  • Then with Now: A Rephotography Workshop at Nunobiki Waterfall, Kobe
    Then with Now: A Rephotography Workshop at Nunobiki Waterfall, Kobe
    Post Conference Featured Workshop: Gary McLeod
  • The Great Wall Story – The Way I Have Discovered It
    The Great Wall Story – The Way I Have Discovered It
    Keynote Presentation: William Lindesay OBE
  • The Disappearance of Silent Film and the Toy Movie Project
    The Disappearance of Silent Film and the Toy Movie Project
    Featured Presentation: Yoneo Ota
  • IAFOR Documentary Photography Award 2017 | Award Winners Screening
    IAFOR Documentary Photography Award 2017 | Award Winners Screening
  • Fake News and the Attack on America’s Freedom of the Press
    Fake News and the Attack on America’s Freedom of the Press
    Keynote Presentation: Gary E. Swanson
  • IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
    IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
  • History, Story, Narrative
    History, Story, Narrative
    Keynote Presentation: Richard Roth

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Speakers

  • Virgil Hawkins
    Virgil Hawkins
    Osaka University, Japan
  • William Lindesay OBE
    William Lindesay OBE
    Founder, International Friends of the Great Wall
  • Gary McLeod
    Gary McLeod
    Hosei University, Japan & Falmouth University, UK
  • Yutaka Mino
    Yutaka Mino
    Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan
  • Yoneo Ota
    Yoneo Ota
    Osaka University of Arts & The Toy Film Museum, Japan
  • Richard Roth
    Richard Roth
    Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, USA
  • Gary E. Swanson
    Gary E. Swanson
    University of Northern Colorado, USA (fmr.)

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Organising Committee

The Conference Programme Committee is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Conference Programme Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Conference Programme Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and overseeing the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.

  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Timothy W. Pollock
    Timothy W. Pollock
    Osaka Kyoiku University & Hagoromo University of International Studies, Japan
  • James Rowlins
    James Rowlins
    Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
  • Paul Spicer
    Paul Spicer
    Hiroshima Jougakuin University, Japan
  • Gary E. Swanson
    Gary E. Swanson
    University of Northern Colorado, USA (fmr.)

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Review Committee

  • Dr Hannah Ho, University of Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam
  • Dr Anna-Marie Jansen Van Vuuren, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
  • Dr Alexander Klemm, Webster University of Thailand, Thailand
  • Dr Chin-Pang Lei, University of Macau, Macau
  • Professor Richard Letteri, Furman University, United States
  • Dr Marcus Lima, State University of Southwest Bahia, Brazil
  • Professor Xenia Negrea, University of Craiova, Romania
  • Dr Jytte Holmqvist, Monash University, Australia

IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by conference Organising Committee members under the guidance of the Academic Governing Board. Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the MediAsia2019 Review Committee, please visit our application page.

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History, Story, Narrative: An Introduction to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
Special Address: Yutaka Mino

This address will introduce the venue of the MediAsia plenary session, designed by world famous architect, Tadao Ando. It will talk about the art museum as a part of the city of Kobe, and how the director has attempted to better write the museum into the city, through a number of communicative and outreach projects.

Read presenter biographies.

Introduction of Osaka University’s Global News View Database
Featured Address: Virgil Hawkins

Globalisation continues at a rapid pace. While the positive impacts of this process are evident, so too are the negative impacts, which can only be properly addressed at a global level. The causes and outcomes of such issues, including inequality, poverty, armed conflicts, the environment and public health, are inextricably linked at a global level. Events and phenomena that are distant and that initially appear to have little bearing on our lives may well be connected to us in some way. In this day and age, anyone has the potential to be a part of the problem, or a victim of its consequences. If we choose to take action, we can also become a part of the solution. In order to exist in this world, and in order to make it a better place, it is increasingly necessary for us to maintain a broad and multifaceted perspective of the world, and thus deepen our understanding of it.

This short presentation will introduce the Global News View (GNV) research centre at Osaka University, dedicated to working towards the realisation of an information environment in which people can comprehensively and objectively view the world and the issues it faces. It focuses on the Japanese-language media, and its works are published primarily in Japanese.

Read presenter biographies.

Then with Now: A Rephotography Workshop at Nunobiki Waterfall, Kobe
Post Conference Featured Workshop: Gary McLeod

Revisiting locations in existing photographs and making new images from the same vantage points is a kind of picture-making often called ‘rephotography’. As an expanding set of visual practices, it is increasingly being used to illustrate change through juxtaposition of previous and present images. However, it is also common to make use of historical/archival images, often not in colour, to emphasise what we have become and what we have lost. As the number of digitally stored photographs is expected to rise to 4.7 trillion this year, why is there such a preference for older images? Combining rephotography with the popular format of a photo walk, this two-part workshop invites delegates to join the author in (re)visiting the Nunobiki area local to the conference venue (within 10 mins walk). Following introductions and a short overview of rephotography, the first part comprises participants locating and rephotographing vantage points in a collection of pre-selected old and recent images from archives and social media platforms. Having gathered a range of visual materials, the second part explores the recombination of that material to address the question of whether significance in rephotography predominately stems from use of a historical image or taking part in the process.

Image | Waterfall, Kobe (1875–2015) by Gary McLeod & 14 Others. Original photograph ©Trustees of the Natural History Museum London.

Read presenter biographies.

The Great Wall Story – The Way I Have Discovered It
Keynote Presentation: William Lindesay OBE

Between the late fourth century BC to 1644 AD at least 16 border-defence systems were intermittently built (or inherited and operated) by rulers of Chinese dynasties – all of them functioning as fortifications against nomadic cavalry from the north. These are known as “Great Walls of China”. Chinese chroniclers wrote a great library about their empires, including a history of each dynasty, but shy of rough work on imperial frontiers they seldom reference “Great Walls”. Today, their remnants comprise the largest system of related ancient ruins in the world, yet in spite of the urgent need to conserve these monuments their academic study and field research is ignored by university faculties – because “Great Wall Studies” transcends many fields.

By reviewing a series of personal Great Wall explorations, field-research foci, discoveries, advocacy and archive projects carried out and achieved in China between 1987 and 2017, as a geographer, author and film-maker I will show how diverse, personal, unconventional – and “foreign” – approaches have made significant contributions to the surprisingly narrow, Sino-centric and limited corpus of Great Wall knowledge, as well as popular understanding.

“The Great Wall”, the most famous building in the world, a bucket-list must-see, remains the least-known and most superficially protected of UNESCO world heritages, as continuing damage to it by nature and man shows. I hold that a better future for its protection, and rational, economic, educational and inspirational uses, rests with the development of “Great Wall Studies” as an integrated course at university level.

Read presenter biographies.

The Disappearance of Silent Film and the Toy Movie Project
Featured Presentation: Yoneo Ota

The percentage of silent film works remaining in the US is only 15%. However, the situation in Japan is even more distressing, with only 0.2% of the works from the 1910s, 4.1% from the 1920s, and 11.7% from the 1930s preserved at Japan’s sole film archive, the Tokyo National Film Center (NFC). With the rise in popularity of talkies in the 1930s, it is likely that barely 5% of the works from this period forward remain.

Almost all of Japan’s silent film works have been lost. This is the current state of Japanese cinema. Why were these films lost? Was it due to war, fire, or by accident? The special circumstances facing Japan come into focus through investigation. We also explore the possibility that these circumstances are the same internationally.

Through this process we came to realize that short fragments of lost silent films were once sold generally for household toy film projectors. The “Toy Film (Restoration) Project” was initiated in response to this discovery.

Over 10 years, this project has been responsible for the collection and restoration of almost 900 films.

Additionally, we proposed a series of film restoration and preservation related workshops in 2006 aimed at conveying the current situation facing silent films to as many people as possible and at lobbying for the education of the next generation of film preservationists and restorers. This year we will hold our 12th workshop.

Also, to make sure that the films we unearth are not simply stored away, we opened the Toy Film Museum in 2015.

These initiatives will be introduced in the presentation.

Image | Screenshot from Roningai (浪人街 第一話、第二話 Roningai Daiichiwa Dainiwa), also known as Samurai Town: Story 1 and Story 2, are respectively 1928 and 1929 black and white Japanese silent films directed by Masahiro Makino.


「無声映画の散逸と玩具映画プロジェクト」

アメリカでの無声映画は15%しか残っていないそうですが、
日本の場合は、もっと悲惨で、日本国唯一のフィルム・アーカイブである
東京国立近代美術館フィルムセンター(NFC)でも、残存率は1910年代0.2%、1920年代4.1%、
1930年代11.7%。1930年代からトーキー化が始まりますから5%もないでしょう。
無声映画はほとんど残っていない。
これが、日本映画の現状です。どうして映画がなくなったのでしょうか?
戦争?火災?事故?・・・これらを究明する時、日本での特殊な事情が見えてきます。
もしかすると世界的にも同じ状況だったかもしれません。それらを探ります。
そして、失われた無声映画の短い断片が家庭用の玩具映写機の為に、
一般に売られていたことが判り、始めたのが「玩具映画(復元)プロジェクトです。
10年ほどの間に900本ほど映像を発掘し、復元しました。
また、多くの人たちに無声映画の現状を伝え、
また映画保存や復元に携わる次代の人たちの育成をアピールするために、
2006年に「映画の復元と保存に関するワークショップ」を提案し、今年で12回になります。
また、2015年に発掘した映像を死蔵させないために「おもちゃ映画ミュージアム」をオープンしました。
これらの取り組みについて、ご紹介いたします。

Read presenter biographies.

IAFOR Documentary Photography Award 2017 | Award Winners Screening

The IAFOR Documentary Photography Award was launched by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) in 2015 as an international photography award that seeks to promote and assist in the professional development of emerging documentary photographers and photojournalists. The award has benefitted since the outset from the expertise of an outstanding panel of internationally renowned photographers, including Dr Paul Lowe as the Founding Judge, and Ed Kashi, Monica Allende, Simon Roberts, Jocelyn Bain Hogg, Simon Norfolk and Emma Bowkett as Guest Judges. Now in its third year, the award has already been widely recognised by those in the industry and has been supported by World Press Photo, Metro Imaging, MediaStorm, Think Tank Photo, University of the Arts London, RMIT University, British Journal of Photography, The Centre for Documentary Practice, and the Medill School of Journalism.

As an organisation, IAFOR’s mission is to promote international exchange, facilitate intercultural awareness, encourage interdisciplinary discussion, and generate and share new knowledge. In keeping with this mission, in appreciation of the great value of photography as a medium that can be shared across borders of language, culture and nation, and to influence and inform our academic work and programmes, the IAFOR Documentary Photography Award was launched as a competition that would help underline the importance of the organisation’s aims, and would promote and recognise best practice and excellence.

Winners of the IAFOR Documentary Photography Award 2017 were announced at The European Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2017 (EuroMedia2017) in Brighton, UK. The award follows the theme of the EuroMedia conference, with 2017’s theme being “History, Story, Narrative”. In support of up-and-coming talent, the IAFOR Documentary Photography Award is free to enter.

Access to the Award Winners Screening is included in the conference registration fee. For more information about the award, click here.

Image | From the project Single Mothers of Afghanistan by IAFOR Documentary Photography Award 2017 Grand Prize Winner, Kiana Hayeri.

Fake News and the Attack on America’s Freedom of the Press
Keynote Presentation: Gary E. Swanson

Throughout time we have seen moments in American history when the press has been revered and honoured, and moments when its reputation has suffered. We have seen great and noble work by journalists in the United States and around the world, and we have seen embarrassing mistakes and lapses of judgment. But what we have never seen, until now, is an attack by a sitting US president on the press’s very role as a democratic institution.

For more than a year now, Donald Trump – first as a candidate, then as president – has waged a war against the press. He has attacked individual journalists and declared entire news organisations to be working against America’s interests.

President Trump’s attacks, despite the dishonesty at their core, are starting to have actual effects in the real world. His rhetoric and threats include loosened libel laws, a war against whistleblowers, and the banning of reporters he doesn’t like. But even scarier is the message that is trickling down to state and local elected officials, as well as to some of the president’s more extreme supporters. The message is: The press is the enemy; nothing it says should be believed; and there is no role or need for the press in American democracy.

Image | Reporters with various forms of "fake news" from an 1894 illustration by Frederick Burr Opper

Read presenter biographies.

IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session

As an organization, IAFOR’s mission is to promote international exchange, facilitate intercultural awareness, encourage interdisciplinary discussion, and generate and share new knowledge. In 2018, we are excited to launch a major new and ambitious international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research initiative which uses the silk road trade routes as a lens through which to study some of the world’s largest historical and contemporary geopolitical trends, shifts and exchanges.

IAFOR is headquartered in Japan, and the 2018 inauguration of this project aligns with the 150th Anniversary of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when Japan opened its doors to the trade and ideas that would precipitate its rapid modernisation and its emergence as a global power. At a time when global trends can seem unpredictable, and futures fearful, the IAFOR Silk Road Initiative gives the opportunity to revisit the question of the impact of international relations from a long-term perspective.

This ambitious initiative will encourage individuals and institutions working across the world to support and undertake research centring on the contact between countries and regions in Europe and Asia – from Gibraltar to Japan – and the maritime routes that went beyond, into the South-East Continent and the Philippines, and later out into the Pacific Islands and the United States. The IAFOR Silk Road Initiative will be concerned with all aspects of this contact, and will examine both material and intellectual traces, as well as consequences.

For more information about the IAFOR Silk Road Initiative, click here.

History, Story, Narrative
Keynote Presentation: Richard Roth

It is often said that there is no apprenticeship in journalism, and Richard Roth's “history, story and narrative” presentation will talk about his own experience as a rookie reporter coming of age in a foreboding American prison called Attica, one part of an American system that holds more than 2 million people captive, more than in any other nation. Roth was one of two newspaper reporters inside the prison yard at Attica during the September 9-13 riots in 1971, serving on the Select Observers Committee, and his subsequent writing about Attica earned him a 1972 nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.

Image | Attica Correctional Facility, New York, USA

Read presenter biographies.

Virgil Hawkins
Osaka University, Japan

Biography

Dr Virgil Hawkins holds a PhD in International Public Policy from the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University, where he currently serves as associate professor. He is also a research associate with the University of the Free State, South Africa.

Before joining OSIPP, Virgil Hawkins was an assistant professor at the Global Collaboration Center, Osaka University (2007-2010), and has also served with the Association of Medical Doctors of Asia (AMDA) in Cambodia (technical advisor, 2002-2004), and in Zambia (country director, 2004-2007).

Virgil Hawkins is also a co-founder of the Southern African Centre for Collaboration on Peace and Security (SACCPS). His prime research interest is in the media coverage of conflict (and the lack thereof), most notably in Africa. His most recent book is Communication and Peace: Mapping an Emerging Field, edited with Julia Hoffmann (Routledge, 2015).

Featured Presentation (2019) | Climate Coverage: Getting More and Getting it Done Right

Previous MediAsia Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Introduction of Osaka University’s Global News View Database
William Lindesay OBE
Founder, International Friends of the Great Wall

Biography

William Lindesay OBE is an honorary senior research fellow at University of Liverpool, where he studied geography and geology in the 1970s. Recently he received the Royal Society for Asian Affairs’ Special Award 2016. He first went to China to recce the Great Wall in 1986, making the first documented traverse of the ruins on foot the following year, in 1987, in which he covered 2,470 km.

Since 1990 he has resided permanently in China, spending more than 2,700 days on its Great Walls. He has written five books on the subject, published by Harvard University Press and Penguin among others, and fronted documentaries that have been screened on National Geographic Channel, Channel 4, Discovery Channel and the Smithsonian Channel.

William Lindesay is credited with arousing China’s national consciousness to protect the Great Wall and its environment, and he has created/curated two national exhibitions in Beijing, at the Capital Museum and the Imperial Academy, and seven provincial exhibitions. For his work presenting and preserving the Great Wall and assuming the role of its international ambassador he was granted permanent residency in China. He lives with his wife and two sons in Beijing, in a village below the Great Wall in the city’s northern suburbs.

Keynote Presentation (2017) | The Great Wall Story – The Way I Have Discovered It
Gary McLeod
Hosei University, Japan & Falmouth University, UK

Biography

Dr Gary McLeod is a Tokyo-based British photographer with a PhD from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Building on a collective inquiry into photographs from the Challenger expedition (1872–1876), his research explores the convergence of rephotography and participatory/collaborative photographic practices. He is Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Hosei University in Tokyo where he teaches courses in photography and visual communication. Additionally he is a lecturer and module leader for the online MA Photography program offered by Falmouth University. Having lived and taught visual communication design in Turkey and India, and having facilitated numerous rephotography and 'post-photography' workshops around Asia, he continues to look at the world 'with' others as opposed to 'for' them.

Post Conference Featured Workshop (2017) | Then with Now: A Rephotography Workshop at Nunobiki Waterfall, Kobe
Yutaka Mino
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan

Biography

Yutaka Mino was born in Kanazawa, Japan, in 1941, and has received his PhD in Art History at Harvard University in 1977. He was appointed as the associate curator in charge of Asiatic Department at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1976, the curator of the Oriental Art Department at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1977, and the curator of the Asian Department at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1985. After Returning to Japan, he was appointed as the director of Osaka Municipal Museum of Art in 1996, and as the founding director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa in 2004. In 2007, he assumed the Vice Chairman, Sotheby’s North America, the Chief Executive Director, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and the Honorary Director, Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. In April 2010, he was appointed as the director of Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, in 2012, the director of Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art, in 2013, the Honorary Director, Abeno Harukas Museum of Art. Yutaka Mino has organized many exhibitions, and also published individual books and catalogs such as Freedom of Clay and Brush Through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz’u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D. in 1980 and Hakuji (White Ware), vol.5 in the Chugoku Togi (Chinese Ceramics) series in 1998.

Presentation | Featured Welcome Address
Yoneo Ota
Osaka University of Arts & The Toy Film Museum, Japan

Biography

Professor Yoneo Ota was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949. While enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Kyoto City University of Arts he initiated and taught a film (image) seminar. Professor Ota studied under screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda, and when Yoda became head of the newly formed Visual Concept Planning Department at the Osaka University of Arts, Professor Ota followed him and joined his team. Professor Ota gained film location experience as a camera assistant at the Daiei Kyoto Studio under the tutelage of cinematographers Kazuo Miyagawa and Fujio Morita. In 1997, he participated in the restoration of Nani ga Kanojo o Sōsaseta ka (“What Made Her Do It?”) (Shigeyoshi Suzuki, 1930) and became the project committee member in charge of the film restoration department of the Kyoto Film Festival, which started that same year. In 2003, he was appointed to be the director of the Toy Film Project. This project is dedicated to the restoration, preservation, investigation and research of toy films and is conducted in conjunction with the Art Research Laboratory of the Osaka University of Arts. In 2005, he became a professor at the Osaka University of Arts (where he continues to lecture). Since 2006 he has been a supervisor for workshops related to film restoration and preservation. Since 2014 he has been the director of the silent film department of the Kyoto Film Festival. In 2015, Professor Ota founded the Kyoto Institute of Film Art and Culture Research (The Toy Film Museum). The museum has discovered, digitally restored and screened Tomiyasu Ikeda's 1926 film Chushingura (“The Loyal 47 Ronin”), as well as Yasujirō Ozu's 1929 film Tokkan Kozo (“A Straightforward Boy”). His work continues.


プロフィール

1949年、京都生まれ。
京都市立芸術大学美術学部在籍中に、「映画(映像)ゼミ」を提案し開講。
シナリオライターの依田義賢に師事。
依田が大阪芸術大学映像学科の学科長になった関係で、
同学科創設時のスタッフとして参加。
カメラマン宮川一夫、森田富士郎の指導で、
撮影助手として大映京都スタジオで、撮影現場を経験。
1997年に「何が彼女をそうさせたか」(1930年、鈴木重吉)の復元に携わり、
同年に京都映画祭がスタートしたことで企画委員となり、映画復元部門を担当。
2003年、大阪芸術大学藝術研究所の共同研究で
「玩具映画および映画復元・調査・研究プロジェクト
(玩具映画プロジェクト)」のディレクター。
2005年に大阪芸術大学教授(現在に至る)。
2006年より「映画の復元と保存に関するワークショップ」を主宰。
2014年より「京都国際映画祭」サイレント映画部門を担当。
2015年、一般社団法人・京都映画芸術文化研究所(おもちゃ映画ミュージア)を創設。
「忠臣蔵」(1926年、池田富保)、「突貫小僧」(1926年、小津安二郎)を発掘上映。
現在に至る。

Featured Presentation (2017) | The Disappearance of Silent Film and the Toy Movie Project
Richard Roth
Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, USA

Biography

Professor Richard Roth has been at Northwestern University in Qatar from its beginning in 2008. Before that, he was Associate Dean, then Senior Associate Dean, of the Medill School of Journalism on the Northwestern campus in Evanston, Illinois for 10 years. Roth has been an educator since 1990, except for a brief stint as a guest editor at The Wall Street Journal in New York at the time that publication launched its online edition, then called wsjie.com, now wsj.com. Before going to The Journal, Roth was tenured on the English faculty at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., where he also served as the adviser to the student newspaper, The DePauw. Before academe, Roth was a newspaperman, having been Editor-in-Chief of the Tribune-Star in Terre Haute, Ind., and a reporter at the late and lamented Buffalo (N.Y.) Courier-Express. He has won dozens of awards for his reporting and writing. Roth has served on the national board of directors of the Society of Professional Journalists, was an international vice president of The Newspaper Guild, president of the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors association, and academic adviser to the US Project for Excellence in Journalism. He currently serves on the Dean’s Council for the College of Graduate and Professional Studies at Indiana State University, is a member of the National Security Journalism Initiative advisory board at the Medill School of Journalism and is a member of the Advisory Board for the Mass Communication Program at Qatar University.

Keynote Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative
Gary E. Swanson
University of Northern Colorado, USA (fmr.)

Biography

Gary E. Swanson is the former Mildred S. Hansen Endowed Chair and Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at the University of Northern Colorado, USA. From 2005-2007 Professor Swanson was a Fulbright scholar to China and lectured at Tsinghua University and the Communication University of China. In summer 2008 he was Commentator for China Central Television International (CCTV-9) and their live coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games. Swanson repeated his assignment covering the London Olympics for CCTV-4 in the summer of 2012. Previously, he was professor and director of television for nine years at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he taught mostly graduate broadcast students. He has been an educator for 26 years; 20 years spent teaching at the university level. Swanson is an internationally recognized and highly acclaimed documentary producer, director, editor, photojournalist, consultant and educator. He has given keynote speeches, presented workshopsretd and lectured at embassies, conferences, festivals, and universities throughout China, South Africa, India, Papua New Guinea, Japan, The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, Greece, Germany, Jordan, Spain, Portugal, Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Swanson has compiled a distinguished professional broadcast career spanning 13 years: From 1978 to 1991, Swanson worked for the National Broadcasting Company where he was honored with national EMMYs for producing and editing: The Silent Shame, a prime-time investigative documentary; Military Medicine, a two-part investigative series on NBC News; and Hotel Crime, an investigative news magazine piece. Swanson was an editor for "breaking news and features" for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, the Today Show, Sunrise, Sunday Today, NBC Overnight, A Closer Look, Monitor, and other prime time news magazines. Swanson covered "breaking news" in 26 states and Canada for the network including trips and campaigns of presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. Swanson was the Fulbright distinguished lecturer and consultant in television news to the government of Portugal in 1989. In 1992, he covered the XXV Olympics in Barcelona, Spain for NBC News as field producer and cameraman. Swanson has earned more than 75 awards for broadcast excellence and photojournalism including three national EMMYs, the duPont Columbia Award, two CINE 'Golden Eagles,' 16 TELLYs, the Monte Carlo International Award, the Hamburg International Media Festival's Globe Award, the Videographer Award, The Communicator Award, the Ohio State Award, the CINDY Award, the 2011 Communitas Outstanding Professor and Educator award, the 2013 Professor of the Year award, and many others. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana with a Bachelor's degree in Education in 1974, and a Master's degree in Journalism in 1993.

Professor Gary E. Swanson is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Media & Film section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Roundtable/Panel Presentation (2019) | Deepfake

Previous MediAsia Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2017) | Fake News and the Attack on America’s Freedom of the Press
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of The International Academic Forum (IAFOR).

One of the founders of IAFOR, he was Academic Director from its inception in 2009 until 2011, Executive Director from 2011-2014, and President from 2014-2016. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Professor Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has held full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). In 2012 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 2015 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children and lives in Nagoya, Japan.

Timothy W. Pollock
Osaka Kyoiku University & Hagoromo University of International Studies, Japan

Biography

Timothy W. Pollock currently lectures on film and visual culture at Osaka Kyoiku University and at Hagoromo University of International Studies, Japan. He received his BA in Religious Studies from the College of William & Mary, USA, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Monash University, Australia. His research is focused on the development of standards and practices in classic Japanese cinema in general, and on the later films of Ozu Yasujiro in particular. He has also presented papers in subjects as diverse as education and ethics, all of which were structured around the idea of dramatic visual narratives. A long-time resident of Japan, he also worked as an assistant editor on the second edition of the Genius Japanese-English Dictionary.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | The State of Film Studies in Japan
James Rowlins
Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore

Biography

James Rowlins left his native England for Paris, France, where he studied for a BA (Hons) and MA specialising in French cinema. His passion for visual culture subsequently took him to Los Angeles, where he earned a doctorate at the University of Southern California, USA. In addition to exploring literature and film through a theoretical lens, as well as dabbling in filmmaking, his dissertation focused on the crossover between post-war American film noir and the French New Wave, arguing that the subversive manipulation of the Hollywood genre formula by the auteurs constitutes a political aesthetic. He has published articles on contemporary French fiction, film and existentialism, cinematic phenomenology and new perspectives on the New Wave. He has held teaching positions in Europe, America and Japan, and is currently a Lecturer in the Humanities and the Arts Department at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore established in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Paul Spicer
Hiroshima Jougakuin University, Japan

Biography

Dr Paul Spicer is currently an Associate Professor at Hiroshima Jougakuin University in the beautiful city of Hiroshima. He was previously employed by the University of Portsmouth as a lecturer within the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, where he co-ordinated the courses Japanese Cinema and Culture, and East Asian Cinema. In 2001 he decided to return to education, and began a degree programme at Portsmouth. He successfully graduated in 2005 with a BSc (1st Class Hons) in Entertainment Technology. In 2007 he began work on his doctoral thesis entitled ‘The Films of Kenji Mizoguchi: Authorship and Vernacular Style’. He completed his thesis in August 2011, and successfully sat his Viva Voce at the University of Portsmouth the same year. Dr Spicer’s research lies primarily in the area of film and cultural studies, and his current work focuses upon the relationship between film and Japanese socio/political issues between 1965 and 1975.

Gary E. Swanson
University of Northern Colorado, USA (fmr.)

Biography

Gary E. Swanson is the former Mildred S. Hansen Endowed Chair and Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at the University of Northern Colorado, USA. From 2005-2007 Professor Swanson was a Fulbright scholar to China and lectured at Tsinghua University and the Communication University of China. In summer 2008 he was Commentator for China Central Television International (CCTV-9) and their live coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games. Swanson repeated his assignment covering the London Olympics for CCTV-4 in the summer of 2012. Previously, he was professor and director of television for nine years at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he taught mostly graduate broadcast students. He has been an educator for 26 years; 20 years spent teaching at the university level. Swanson is an internationally recognized and highly acclaimed documentary producer, director, editor, photojournalist, consultant and educator. He has given keynote speeches, presented workshopsretd and lectured at embassies, conferences, festivals, and universities throughout China, South Africa, India, Papua New Guinea, Japan, The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, Greece, Germany, Jordan, Spain, Portugal, Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Swanson has compiled a distinguished professional broadcast career spanning 13 years: From 1978 to 1991, Swanson worked for the National Broadcasting Company where he was honored with national EMMYs for producing and editing: The Silent Shame, a prime-time investigative documentary; Military Medicine, a two-part investigative series on NBC News; and Hotel Crime, an investigative news magazine piece. Swanson was an editor for "breaking news and features" for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, the Today Show, Sunrise, Sunday Today, NBC Overnight, A Closer Look, Monitor, and other prime time news magazines. Swanson covered "breaking news" in 26 states and Canada for the network including trips and campaigns of presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. Swanson was the Fulbright distinguished lecturer and consultant in television news to the government of Portugal in 1989. In 1992, he covered the XXV Olympics in Barcelona, Spain for NBC News as field producer and cameraman. Swanson has earned more than 75 awards for broadcast excellence and photojournalism including three national EMMYs, the duPont Columbia Award, two CINE 'Golden Eagles,' 16 TELLYs, the Monte Carlo International Award, the Hamburg International Media Festival's Globe Award, the Videographer Award, The Communicator Award, the Ohio State Award, the CINDY Award, the 2011 Communitas Outstanding Professor and Educator award, the 2013 Professor of the Year award, and many others. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana with a Bachelor's degree in Education in 1974, and a Master's degree in Journalism in 1993.

Professor Gary E. Swanson is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Media & Film section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Roundtable/Panel Presentation (2019) | Deepfake

Previous MediAsia Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2017) | Fake News and the Attack on America’s Freedom of the Press