Japanese Wagashi Sweetmaking & Tasting Workshop in Butler, October 18.

Via alde (Creative Commons).

This month there are two Japanese Wagashi Sweetmaking & Tasting Workshops being held in the area. Registration for the one in Oakland on the 19th is closed, but space is still available for the one held at the Maridon Museum in Butler on Friday the 18th. From the museum's website:

In this year's annual cultural program from Handa City, Aichi prefecture, Japan, participants will work with a master wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) maker Masahiro Koie to learn how to make artful sweets and the history and culture of Japanese sweet makers.

It will be held from 1:30 to 3:30 pm at the Asian art museum located at 322 N. McKean St. in downtown Butler, some 40 miles north of Pittsburgh (map). Registration is required and can be done by calling 724–282-0123 or by signing up with the Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania.

International Family Day at Carnegie Library, October 13.

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Oakland will host International Family Day on October 13 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm.

Chinese movie Ocean Heaven (海洋天堂) to open Reelabilities: Pittsburgh Disabilities Film Festival, October 26.

Chinese-language film Ocean Heaven (海洋天堂) will open the Reelabilities: Pittsburgh Film Festival on October 26. The film stars Jet Li as the father of a young man with autism. Wikipedia provides a summary:

Ocean Heaven is about a terminally ill father, Sam Wong (Jet Li) as he works his job in an aquarium and struggles to look after his 21-year-old son Dafu, who has autism (Wen Zhang). Sam has single-handedly brought up his son since his wife died 14 years ago and looks after him day and night attempting to help him learn basic tasks in order to care for himself, as well as searching for a home for his son before he passes away. As the story progresses, the growing relationship between father and son as well as the community around them become clearer. Ling ling (Gwei Lun-mei) plays the role of a clown who is part of a small traveling circus (they perform in the aquarium for a short period of time) and who gets on well with Dafu, leading to a close friendship between them.

The movie plays at 7:00 on the 26th at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild on the Northside (map). Tickets are available online for $25 for adults and $15 for students, though films not part of opening night are $10 and $5, respectively.

Reelabilities is a multi-city festival

dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities

Clara C at Pitt, October 15.

Via the Facebook event page.

Singer-songwriter Clara C (Clara Chung) will perform at the University of Pittsburgh's William Pitt Union on October 15, between dates on her current tour. The flyer has details, and her Youtube channel has songs.

Lao-language The Rocket among Three Rivers Film Festival openers, November 8.

Australian film The Rocket is one of four movies to open the Three Rivers Film Festival on November 8, writes the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In "The Rocket," a boy believed to bring bad luck leads his family and a couple of ragged misfits through Laos to find a new home. After a calamity-filled journey through a land scarred by war, he tries to prove he's not cursed by building a giant rocket and entering the most lucrative and dangerous competition of the year, the Rocket Festival.

In Lao with English subtitles, "The Rocket" is Australia's submission for consideration in the foreign language film category for the 86th Academy Awards.

The Rocket will play at Waterworks Cinemas (map) at 7:15 pm. A complete list of films will be announced on October 21.

Stream the Pirates on Japanese TV.

If you have basic cable and can't watch the Pirates on TV, and if you dislike downloading programs in order to stream television channels, you might consider watching the Pirates' playoff games on Japanese TV. The Chinese website Zenyunzhibo streams live TV from hundreds of Chinese channels, and a handful of Japanese and Korean ones. Japanese channel JSPORTS---in the first batch of channels on the Chinese-language page---carries Major League baseball, and has Japanese broadcasters over the English-language TBS feed. JSPORTS will have Game 4 live Monday at 3:07 PM (Pittsburgh time).

Taiwanese film Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (明天記得愛上我) part of Pittsburgh LGBT Film Festival, October 13.

The Taiwanese movie Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (明天記得愛上我) will play on October 13 as part of Reel Q Pittsburgh LGBT Film Festival. Slant magazine provides a summary:

The weight of expectations and unrealized possibilities in love hampers both Weichung (Richie Jen) and Mandy (Kimi Hsia), siblings who find themselves uneasy when faced with the impending demands of domesticity. For Mandy, the issue is her engagement to Sen-Sen (Stone), a reliable, bland hubby-in-waiting, who she dumps after an existentially panicked episode in a department store. Weichung's issues, however, are a bit more cumbersome. Just as his wife, Feng (Mavis Fan), opens discussions about a second child, Weichung's homosexual urges, once thought repressed, reemerge and lead to open flirtations and dates with a nerd-dreamy flight attendant (Wong Ko Lok). Rather than stressing the familial bond between brother and sister, writer-director Chen introduces a team of hip gay men, led by marriage planner Stephen (Lawrence Ko), who both council confused Weichung and give Sen-Sen a makeover.

The movie starts at 5:00 pm and, like all movies in the festival, will be shown at the Harris Theater in the Cultural District (map).

Gwangju National University of Education president receives University of Pittsburgh Medallion Award.

Via Gwangju National University of Education, but watermarked here by Newsway.

Park Nam-gi, the president of Gwangju National University of Education, was in Pittsburgh on the 1st to receive a University of Pittsburgh Medallion Award from Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg. The awards are issued to distinguished alumni on the occasion of the university's 225th anniversary (in 2012). Park earned his Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh in 1993 and worked two stints as a visiting professor at Pitt in 1999 and 2000-2001. Lately, and most recently in July, he has led teacher-training and cultural-immersion programs in Pittsburgh with the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council.

The press release on the GNUE webpage is reprinted below in its entirety because the webpage is unlinkable:

2013 Carnegie International opens October 4.

From He An's What makes me understand what I know, via the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art.

The 2013 Carnegie International art exhibition opens October 4 at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland (map) and will run through March 16, 2014. Artists featured of relevance to this blog are Japan's Ei Arakawa and Tezuka Architects, China's He An, and Vietnam's Dinh Q. Lê. The linked artist profiles provide fuller biographies and exhibition details, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a profile of Lê in August. Ei Arakawa will perform Soccer Ball and Figure at 11:00 am on October 5, and Tezuka Architects will give a lecture from 6:30 to 7:30 on October 7.


Dinh Q. Lê, from the "Vietnam to Hollywood" series, via Blendspace.

Postponed Chiharu Shiota "Traces of Memory" exhibition to open October 4.

"Stairway", from Chiharu Shiota's official website.

An exhibition by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota that was scheduled to open September 12 will finally open on October 4 after a delay "due to last-minute city code concerns", writes the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Traces of Memory" will be on display at the Mattress Factory's new satellite gallery, ocated at 516 Sampsonia Way (map), a few houses down from the museum's main building and down the street from the City of Asylum. The museum's website summarizes the exhibit:

Central to the artist’s work are the themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood and dealing with anxiety. Shiota explores the relationship between waking life and memories through hauntingly beautiful installations that incorporate everyday objects like shoes, pianos and hospital beds encased in webs of yarn. Stretched in multi-layers in a gallery space, Shiota weaves disorienting cocoons of black yarn that reflect the artist’s desire to ‘draw in the air’.

The site-specific installation of new works by Shiota will fill the eight rooms in the building at 516 Sampsonia Way—a 19th-century row home with a storied past—which is suited to the artist’s work. Its interior is cosmetically untouched; the raw condition of the building lends itself well to reflections on the past and the conjuring of memories.

It will run through May 31, 2014.