Past Season

Women in Japan: Memories of the Past, Dreams for the Future
(DOCUMENTARY, 52 minutes, 22 seconds)

Shattering western myths of Japanese women as good wives or geisha girls, the illuminating documentary Women in Japan: Memories of the Past, Dreams for the Future tells the story of six very different women challenging stereotypes about what it means to be female in Japan.

Filmmaker Profile: Joanne Hershfield & Jan Bardsley

Joanne Hershfield is a documentary filmmaker who teaches film and video production and media studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Also a film scholar, she has published and co-edited several books on Mexican cinema, including The Invention of Dolores del Rio (University of Minnesota Press) and MEXICO'S CINEMA: A Century of Film and Filmmakers (Scholarly Resources).

Jan Bardsley is associate professor of Japanese Language and literature in the Curriculum in Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of The Bluestockings of Japan: Feminist Essays and Fiction from Seito, 1911-1916 (forthcoming from the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan). Bardsley has also been a visiti ng scholar at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities, Hikone, Japan, and at the Women’s Studies Center at Tokyo Women’s Christian University.

• Professor Joanne Hershfield teaches film studies and film and video production at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Jan Bardsley is Associate Professor of Japanese Language and literature n the Curriculum in Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.