Whittier College Film Screenings, Discussions Focus on China's Environment

Whittier College hosts Pulitzer Center grantees and documentary filmmakers Gary Marcuse and Shi Lihong, as well as ChinaDialogue Beijing Editor Liu Jianqiang for a multi-day visit focused on China's growing environmental crisis. The visit, Monday, November 16-Wednesday, November 18, kicks off with film screenings of the Pulitzer Center-supported documentary Searching for Sacred Mountain and an earlier film, Waking the Green Tiger—both co-directed by Marcuse and Lihong.

The visit is part of the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE) events on campus that week and comes five months after the International Conference on Ecological Environment, a day-long meeting in June 2015 in Beijing co-sponsored by the Pulitzer Center, Communication University of China, and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation. The conference considered the connections between the environment and religious and cultural traditions.

In September 2015, the Pulitzer Center released "Ecological Civilization," an e-book compendium of the talks and proceedings of the Conference.

Searching for Sacred Mountain, which has screened at festivals and conferences around the world, tells the story of Jianqiang, an investigative environmental journalist who has converted to Buddhism. Marcuse explores how an unlikely partnership between religion and government may hold the answer to China's growing environmental crisis.

In the midst of a worsening environmental crisis, with constant reports of contaminated soil and water and record levels of air pollution, China's government is appealing to traditional religions for help. The country needs to construct an "ecological civilization," officials say, and traditional culture has a key role to play.

Waking the Green Tiger tells the story of the birth of a grassroots campaign that managed to halt the construction of a massive dam on the upper Yangtze River in 2008. It is the winner of 2013 China Green Film Award, Brazilian Environmental Journalism Award and Grantham Prize 2012 Special Award for Merit for Environmental Journalism.

Whittier College LIASE Campus Screening: Waking the Green Tiger
Monday, November 16
6 – 8 pm
Hoover 100
13406 Philadelphia Street
Whittier, CA 90608

Whittier College LIASE Campus Screening: Searching for Sacred Mountain
Tuesday, November 17
7 – 8 pm
Villalobos Halls
13406 Philadelphia Street
Whittier, CA 90608

Whittier Law School Presentation and Discussion: Environmental Law in China
Wednesday, November 18
5 – 7 pm
Whittier Law School, Room 1
3333 Harbor Boulevard
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Waking the Green Tiger also will be shown at 7 pm on Friday, November 20, in the Linwood Dunn Theatre at Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood, California, for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).