A Jewish Girl in Shanghai
VIEW EVENT DETAILSPlease join Asia Society Washington for the final event in the Jewish Traditions in Asia Series, which shows a never-before seen perspective on an important part of Jewish and Chinese history. A Jewish Girl in Shanghai is the first fully produced movie within the PRC portraying the Jewish community of Shanghai during World War II. For the first time, this story is told from the Chinese point of view in a feature length, animated feature that has been shown in several international film festivals.
After the screening, a discussion will be held with Susan Barocas, Director of the Washington Jewish Film Festival, and Liliane Willens, author of Stateless in Shanghai.
Susan Barocas is the director of the Washington Jewish Film Festival and WJFF Year-Round program at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center. She has organized exhibitions of film and video in conjunction with numerous museums, organizations and embassies in DC and NY; served as a grants panelist for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities; and, since 2004, chaired the jury for Filmfest DC Capital Focus Award. A film/video writer and producer, her credits include PBS, Discovery Communications, and the U.S. government, among others.
Liliane Willens was born of Russian Jewish parentage in the former extraterritorial French Concession of Shanghai, China, where she attended a French lycée. Liliane, her parents and her siblings — all stateless — experienced World War II under the Japanese military occupation, the bombing by American planes, the civil war between the armies of the Nationalist government and the communists, and later the arrival in Shanghai of the victorious People's Liberation Army. Because of difficulties at that time to obtain an immigration visa to the United States, Liliane lived two years under the newly established People’s Republic of China. When Liliane immigrated to the United States, she studied as an undergraduate at Boston University where she also received a Ph.D. in French Language and Literature. She taught these subjects at Boston College and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While in academia, she published a book on Voltaire and a number of articles on 18th-century France. Later moving to Washington, DC, she worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Peace Corps.
Co-hosted by the Washington Jewish Film Festival
Event Details
Asia Society Washington, The Cinnabar Room, Whittemore House, 2nd Flr., 1526 New Hampshire Ave, NW