A Broken Mirror of Desire in Occupied Shanghai: A Zoom Conversation with James Schamus, the Screenwriter behind Lust, Caution
4/21 at 4pm CST!
Sponsored by the Film & Media Studies Program of the Department of English, the Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center at Texas Tech University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
With a careful eye that draws our attention to the lipstick left on a cup, to the tremble of a diamond ring flung on a desk, in Lust, Caution, director Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus frame a world of desire and paranoia in Occupied Shanghai. Based on a 1979 short story by Zhang Ailing (also known Eileen Chang), it follows Wang Jiazhi (Tang Wei), a young Chinese student and aspiring actress, who is the honey pot in an assassination plot against Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu-Wa) who works for the puppet government set up by the Japanese occupiers. Genuine feelings of love arise in Jiazhi, an act of authenticity that may lead to her doom.
On April 21 at 4pm CST, Oscar nominee James Schamus comes to Texas Tech to speak with students of ENGL 4315, ENGL 5351, and the university community about the making of an astonishing adaptation that mulls the limits and disruptive possibilities of desire in a city under occupation.
Trailer:
Speaker Bios: Fareed Ben-Youssef is Assistant Professor in Film & Media Studies at Texas Tech University. He earned his Ph.D. in Film and Media from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of No Jurisdiction: Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema (SUNY Press, 2022).
James Schamus is Professor of Professional Practice Film and Media Studies at Columbia University. He is an award-winning screenwriter (The Ice Storm), producer (Brokeback Mountain), director (Indignation), and former CEO of Focus Features. He is the author of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud: The Moving Word (University of Washington Press, 2008). He earned his BA, MA, and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
Part of Expanding the Circle: Indigenous and Native American Studies funded by a Humanities Initiatives Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this virtual event do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
