Briefly Noted/Pitt Film Festival Celebrates Chinese Lunar New Year

In celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, Pitt will present a free public film festival Feb. 15-17 that highlights the environmental concerns of various Chinese ethnic cultures.

The festival will screen what lately has been called Chinese “ecocinema,” feature-length films that expose ecological problems.

The first event will be a lecture by Guobin Yang, associate professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, at 4 p.m. Feb. 15 in 4130 Posvar Hall. Yang’s lecture, titled “The Rise of Environmentalism in China,” will examine whether China is doing enough environmentally to keep in step with its booming economy and rapid urban consumption.

Yang’s lecture will be followed by a 5:45 p.m. reception and a screening of the documentary Before the Flood (directed by Yan Yu and Li Yifan, 2004), in Pitt’s Alumni Hall Auditorium, where all of the series’ films will be shown. The remaining festival schedule is as follows:

When Ruoma Was Seventeen (Zhang Jiarui, 2002), 8:15 p.m. Feb. 15;

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Yimou Zhang, 2005), 7:15 p.m. Feb. 16; and

Suzhou River (Ye Lou, 2000), 7:15 p.m. Feb. 17.

The festival is sponsored by Pitt’s Asian Studies Center in the University Center for International Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Department of Sociology, and Film Studies Program. For additional information, contact Katy Carlitz at 412-648-7370 or xinmin@pitt.edu.