New Japanese animated film Knights of Sidonia: Love Woven in the Stars (シドニアの騎士 あいつむぐほし) in Pittsburgh, September 13 and 14.

The 2021 Japanese animated film Knights of Sidonia: Love Woven in the Stars (シドニアの騎士 あいつむぐほし) will play in Pittsburgh on September 13 and 14. From the distributor:

It’s been nearly 10 years since ace pilot Nagate Tanikaze repelled the Gauna forces and saved Sidonia, humanity’s last home. And now, the Guardians are bringing the fight to them. In this final battle where annihilation looms and love blossoms unexpectedly, will humanity persevere or will the Gauna see domination?

It will play locally at the AMC Loews Waterfront and tickets are available online. The theater is located at 300 West Waterfront Dr. in the Waterfront shopping complex in Homestead (map), across the Monongahela River from Greenfield, Squirrel Hill, and the rest of Pittsburgh.

"Four Evenings" discussion with Charles Yu and his 2020 novel Interior Chinatown, October 14 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Global Studies Center will host a discussion with novelist Charles Yu on October 14, part of the Center's "Four Evenings" series in collaboration with Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures. Yu will speak as part of the latter's "Ten Evenings" series on October 18.

The author of four books and numerous television scripts, Charles Yu won the 2020 National Book Award for Interior Chinatown, an ambitious satire about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping roles we are forced to play.

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

The "Four Evenings" discussion with Yu will be led by Dr. Kirsten Strayer, Program Coordinator for the University of Pittsburgh's SCREENSHOT: Asia festival. The event starts at 6:00 pm and will be online; registration is required.

Japanese Student Association at Carnegie Mellon University seeks members, executive design chair.

The Japanese Student Association at Carnegie Mellon University is spreading words of the organization and looking for new members, as well as someone to fill the executive design chair vacancy. From an email to the Japan Association of Greater Pittsburgh mailing list:

Hello!

We are JSA, the Japanese Student Association at Carnegie Mellon University. We are an organization dedicated to spreading awareness and passion for both traditional and modern Japanese culture throughout the community, offering connections to other Japanese students and professional entities.

Professional:

• Career Fair with Japanese companies looking for students abroad

Internal:

• Fundraising events

• Suikawari

• And so on!

If you are a Carnegie Mellon student and interested in joining our organization, please fill out the form below! 

https://forms.gle/2Ms1Rp1xNqCwzoVm7

In addition to this, we currently have the executive design chair position open. We would be happy to welcome anyone that has an interest in design and wants to help JSA out! The design chair will take on the roles of designing posters for events, creating logos, and other design related jobs.

If you have any questions or are interested in the open executive position, feel free to contact Kent (krshibat@andrew.cmu.edu).

Facebook: Japanese Student Association at Carnegie Mellon University | Facebook

Instagram: Japanese Student Association (@cmujsa)

Chinese program at Win-Win Kung Fu in Squirrel Hill, from September 11; free trial class on September 4.

Squirrel Hill's Win-Win Kung Fu Culture Center will resume its Chinese-language program from September 4.

A free trial class is given to kick the program off:

Date and time: Saturday September 4th at 2:40-3:30 pm

Starting Saturday September 11th, 2021, the class will be held every Saturday 2:40-3:30 pm, mixed with kids and adults.

Fees: $5 each class for current students, $10 for non-students.

Those interested can visit or contact the center. Win-Win Kung Fu is located at 2705-2707 Murray Ave. (map).

Food delivery service Hungry Panda hiring Mandarin-speaking Business Development Specialist for Pittsburgh area.

Hungry Panda is hiring a Mandarin-speaking Business Development Specialist for the Pittsburgh area. As PennsylvAsia noted last summer, more Chinese delivery options, like Fantuan and Chowbus, are making their way to Pittsburgh.

Squirrel Hill's Panda Supermarket (熊猫超市) opens at new location today.

Panda Supermarket (熊猫超市), an Asian grocery store in Squirrel Hill, will open at its new location at 5816-5818 Forbes Ave. (map) today. It will also expand to its pre-COVID hours of operation:

New store hours at the new spot: Monday - Thursday: 10am - 9pm Friday - Saturday: 10am - 9pm Sunday: 11am - 7pm

Panda opened in 2017 and began work at its new location in summer 2020.

2019 Japanese animated film Promare (プロメア) in Pittsburgh, September 16 and 19.

The 2019 Japanese animated film Promare (プロメア) will play in Pittsburgh on September 16 and 19. From the distributor:

The first feature-length film from the acclaimed studio TRIGGER, creators of the hit series KILL la KILL and Little Witch Academia, and director Hiroyuki Imaishi (GURREN LAGANN, KILL la KILL), Promare uses a bold cel-shaded visual style to tell a blistering action-adventure story, and is the spiritual successor to many of director Imaishi’s former works.

Thirty years has passed since the appearance of the Burnish, a race of flame-wielding mutant beings, who destroyed half of the world with fire. When a new group of aggressive mutants calling themselves Mad Burnish appears, the epic battle between Galo Thymos, a new member of the anti-Burnish rescue team Burning Rescue, and Lio Fotia, the leader of Mad Burnish begins.

It plays locally at the AMC Loews Waterfront and the Cinemark theaters in McCandless, Monroeville, and Robinson. The September 16 shows are dubbed in English and the September 19 ones are in Japanese with English subtitles.

Screening of 2009 documentary Vincent Who?, on 1982 Vincent Chen murder, September 27 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present a screening of the documentary Vincent Who? on September 27. From the film's official site:

In 1982, at the height of anti-Japanese sentiments arising from massive layoffs in the auto industry, a Chinese-American named Vincent Chin was murdered in Detroit by two white autoworkers. Chin's killers, however, got off with a $3,000 fine and 3 years probation, but no jail time. Outraged by this injustice, Asian Americans around the country united for the first time across ethnic and socioeconomic lines to form a pan-Asian identity and civil rights movement.

Among its significant outcomes, the movement led to the historic broadening of federal civil rights protection to include all people in America regardless of immigrant status or ethnicity.

VINCENT WHO? explores this important legacy through interviews with the key players at the time as well as a whole new generation of activists whose lives were impacted by Vincent Chin. It also looks at the case in relation to the larger narrative of Asian American history, in such events as Chinese Exclusion, Japanese American Internment in WWII, the 1992 L.A. Riots, anti-Asian hate crimes, and post-9/11 racial profiling.

Ultimately, VINCENT WHO? asks how far Asian Americans have come since the case and how far they have yet to go.

It will be followed by a Q-and-A session with the film's producer. The event will be held from 7:00 pm in the William Pitt Union (map) Dining Room A, safety permitting, or online via Zoom; it's free and open to the public, though registration is required.

Pitt's Asian Studies Center offers language partner program.

The Asian Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh is again offering its language partner program this school year.

The Asian Studies Center offers a language partnership program to match students learning Asian languages with native speakers of those languages. The Asian language learners will have an opportunity to practice their language with a peer, while native Asian language speakers will have opportunities to practice their English. Each partner will have the opportunity to build a relationship with another student across cultures. If you think you might be interested, visit our website and click here to fill out the request form. If you have other questions about the program, please contact the Asian Studies Center at asia@pitt.edu.

Those interested can register online.

Presentation on Japanese art and calligraphy at Carnegie Museum of Art, October 7.

The Carnegie Museum of Art and the Japan America Society of Pennsylvania will present Dr. Frank Feltens and "The Mary and Cheney Cowles COllection and 20th-Century Japanese Painting and Calligraphy in the Freer Gallery of Art" on October 7.

Dr. Frank Feltens, Associate Curator of Japanese Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, will explore how the Freer Gallery’s Japanese art collection evolved over the hundred years since the museum’s founding and how the most recent additions stay true to the original intentions and aesthetics of Charles Lang Freer. The talk will conclude with a journey through the exhibition Meeting Tessai: Modern Japanese Art from the Cowles Collection that highlights the Cowles gift and showcases how Freer conversed with contemporary Japanese artists like the famous literatus Tomioka Tessai.

The talk will be held in the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater and will be followed by refreshments and a networking reception. Registration is free but donations are encouraged.

The event starts at 6:00 pm and is free and open to the public, though registration is required. The museum is located at 4400 Forbes Ave. in Oakland (map), accessible by buses 28X, 58, 61A, 61B, 61C, 61D, 67, 69, 71B, 71D, 75, and P3.