Celebrating the Life of Prof. Lindon Warren Barrett: Remembering Lindon

Irvine -- On the 21 July 2008 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we commemorated and celebrated the life of Prof. Lindon Warren Barrett, who was murdered in his home in Long Beach 7 July 2008.


Joining in reflecting on his life and scholarly career are colleagues and students who knew him, both during his long tenure at UCI and, more recently, at UC Riverside, where he ended up last year. He was a beloved English and African American studies professor at both schools, and for several years, director of the African American studies program at UCI. His family in Winnepeg, Canada, has posted this obituary in the Winnipeg Free Press: Obituary.


Born in 1961 in Guyana, he migrated to England when he was just one, moving to Canada in 1966. He grew up in Winnipeg, earning his BA from York University, an MA from the University of Denver, and ultimately a Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. His Ph.D thesis was titled: "In the dark: Issues of value, evaluation, and authority in twentieth century critical discourse" (216 pages, AAT 9101135; .Callalloo

Faculty participating in the memorial program are Katherine Kinney, who chairs the English department at UC Riverside, and her UCR colleague, George Haggerty and from UCI, History Prof. Winston James, who was until last month chair of African American studies program here.

Former UCI Ph.D students Arnold Pan (now teaching at UCI) and Lelia Neti (now at Occidental College) will also be participating. Jamie Park, former UCI undergraduate student and now pursuing her Ph.D at UCR, will also be on the program.

We'll also be reading tributes from other colleagues and friends of Lindon during the program.


This special program was also simulcast on KUCR, 88.3 AM in Riverside County via kuci.org. Our appreciation to KUCR for this collaboration.


To listen to the program, without the music, click here: .


A podcast of this program is now available at: podcasts.


Corrected Sunday July 20: There is no public memorial service in Long Beach Tuesday; the family plans to scatter his ashes in accordance with his wishes into the Pacific Ocean.


On Saturday August 23 a Canadian memorial service will be held in Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

Other services are envisioned at UCR and UCI later in the fall.

The family suggests in lieu of flowers, "[b]ecause of Lindon's love of reading, if so desired a donation to the Winnipeg Public Library or a charity encouraging literacy would be most appreciated. WPL donation page.


Other links:


OC Register's College Life blog:

Radio Tribute to Slain English Professor Lindon Barrett (about this program)

More on Death of English Professor Lindon Barrett

English Professor Found Slain


Los Angeles Times:

Slain Man Identified as UC Riverside Professor


Press-Telegram (Long Beach):

Popular professor found slain in LB


Press-Enterprise (Riverside):

Professor found dead hoped for change at UCR


Ned Ragget's Ponder it All blog:

RIP Lindon Barrett


Facebook page:

Lindon Barrett


Police report:
Murder

Remembering Photographer Dolores Neuman

On the 23 June 2008 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, in the first half-hour, we celebrated and remembered the life of photographer Dolores Neuman. The Washington-D.C.-based photographer documented social movements and the people within them. She was involved with CovertAction Information Bulletin (later CovertAction Quarterly), co-founded by her husband, Louis Wolf. She provided photography for "Northern Lights", a documentary about farmers in North Dakota, and Rob Epstein's "The Times of Harvey Milk," a documentary about the slain gay San Francisco supervisor. She was instrumental in promoting many independent films and independent directors. She was a founder of the Jewish Film Festival. She passed away June 5.

We talked with friends of Dolores Neuman, including Amanda Spake, former managing editor of "Mother Jones" magazine, and a writer and investigative reporter for national magazines and news outlets, specializing in health and medicine, environmental issues, education, food and drug safety, and consumer protection, focusing recently on post-Katrina investigations as a Katrina Media Fellow. She is a UC Irvine graduate.


We also talked with Janet Cole, a social-issue documentary film producer ("Absolutely Positive", "Regret to Inform," "Paragraph 175" and others) who had a close friendship with Dolores for almost 30 years.

During the late 1970s through the mid-1980s when the American independent film genre was first being coined and documentary films were initially being shown in U.S. theaters, Dolores was one of the first grassroots specialists in creative audience development: Working with independent theater owners and distributors to attract audiences to see such social-issue films. She worked with Janet Cole on two films, first "The War At Home," which they promoted together in SF and a few years later, "Soldier Girls".

Also joining in the conversation was another long-time friend, Rob Epstein, the director of "The Times of Harvey Milk."

See the obituary adapted from the Washington Post: "Dolores Neuman, 66; photographer, promoter for public interest causes."

See: Guest Book on Washington Post site

To listen to the show, click here: .

Earthquake Relief: Organizing to Help

Irvine -- On our show airing 16 June 2008, KUCI's Subversity looks at how concerned UCI students and others helped spark relief efforts over the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China last month.

We talk with Wei Li, a UCI doctoral student in Social Ecology, who spearheaded a relief drive at UC Irvine, raising over $30,000 in just days. He also organized a candlelight vigil at UCI for the victims of the earthquake.

Wei Li was born and raised in Shangqiu, Henan Province. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Renmin University of China (Beijing), after working as an undergraduate for the Chinese Young Volunteers Association. He begin his interests in environmental planning in 2003 by joining the MA program in Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo (Canada). He came to UCI in 2006 as a PhD student in Planning, Policy and Design, focusing on environmental policy and economics. He is currently working on a research project on how trees in Los Angeles influence house values.

Wei Li can be contacted at: mailto:%20wli3@uci.edu.

He is working with the Orange County Chinese Professional Association on handling further donations.

UCI news profile: Campus responds to crisis.

To listen to the show, click here: .

Demystifying Diasporic Vietnamese Politics

On our 9 June 2008 edition, Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, features a conversation with an editor and journalist who was fired from the country's top Vietnamese-language newspaper in a failed attempt to appease anti-communist protesters, and who has now resurrected himself as a blogger writing about Vietnamese diasporic politics in and beyond Little Saigon. We talk with the writer who goes by the moniker "Bolsavik".

The Bolsavik's meek alter ego is Hao-Nhien Vu, a mathematician with a knack for telling the truth, he says. He was previously employed at Nguoi Viet Daily News, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in California and probably in the country. For four years he was the Managing Editor, until anti-communist protests over an artwork involving a pedicure spa caused the paper to fire him. Since then, he has been writing and editing the blog Bolsavik.com, which is playing a major role demystifying all that's happening within the Vietnamese American community here in Orange County and elsewhere.

Our interview with The Bolsavik (coined from Bolsa, the main drag in Little Saigon, and Bolshevik) is set against continuing demonstrations against his former newspaper, Nguoi Viet, as well as against Viet Weekly, another publication in the region. Our earlier interview with Publisher Le Vu of the Viet Weekly appears here: mp3 audio.

To listen to the show with the Bosavik, click here: .

A new profile of Subversity's show host appears on the KUCI web site: "Spotlight on Dan Tsang.".

An earlier Subversity interview with outgoing UCI History Prof. Mike Davis is extracted in AMASS, issue 29 (2008), pp. 32-35: "The War at Home: Interview with Mike Davis" by Dan Tsang. (The issue is available from Atomic Books, or directly from the publisher, Society for Popular Democracy, see: Subscriptions).

Filming Up the Yangtze; APIAVote Town Hall Highlights

Up the Yangtze: Tourists on boats in the Lesser Three Gorges; photo credit: Jonathan Chang; Copyright © EyeSteel Film, 2007

Irvine -- On the 19 May edition of KUCI's Subversity program, we talked with independent film director Yung Chang, whose exquisite documentary, "Up the Yangtze," has opened nationally. In the second part of the program, we bring you highlights from the APIAVote Town Hall at UC Irvine, which heard from Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, as they reached out to the API community. John McCain did not appear but sent a surrogate, Assemblyman Van Tran. Third party candidates were not included.

Just days after a devastating earthquake hit southwestern China, the opening of "Up the Yangtze" gives audiences a cinematic look at more of the travails faced by ordinary Chinese as their county embraces modernization. Yung Chang, a Canadian Chinese filmmaker, talks about why he made his film, an "Upstairs. Downstairs" take on the crew and tourists on a luxury cruise ship that traverses the Yangtze as the Three Gorges dam project moves inexorably to its completion. His film focuses on two workers on the ship: a cocky and handsome young man who explains how he charms tourists to part with their tips, and a more quiet young girl who toils to clean dishes, a job she needs to help bring income to her family whose home is destroyed and flooded by the Three Gorges project. Chang talks about how progress in China is very complicated. He also explains how his film led to brighter futures for both workers; the film's web site indicates how one can help.

In OC, the film is showing at Regency South Coast Village in Santa Ana; it is also in Los Angeles etc. A Sundance documentary film award winner, it screened earlier at the Newport Beach Film Festival last month and won a special grand jury award at the Asian Pacific American Film Festival in Los Angeles.

We also bring you highlights from the historic first town hall organized by Asian/Pacific Islander Americans, that took place this past Saturday at UC Irvine. Hilary Clinton appeared on a live video screen, answering questions submitted earlier, while Barrack Obama, on a live telephone feed, took questions from a panel of API activists; Obama, born in Hawaii, also identified himself as a Pacific Islander and a "Native Hawaiian". The event was ignored by the mainstream media.

News Update: Show host Dan Tsang was quoted in Sing Tao (Chinese) after the California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage:

LA edition: www.singtaousa.com/051608/la080516c1.php

HK edition: singtao.com/oversea/0517ao27.html

Other Resources:

Up the Yangtze: http://www.uptheyangtze.com/

LA Times review: www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/reviews/la-et-yangtze16-2008may16,0,1167214.story

Variety coverage: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117984283.html?categoryid=2520&cs=1

NY Times review: http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/movies/25yang.html?ref=movies

APIAVote: http://www.apiavote.org/

Early town hall news and blog coverage:

Nikkei View: www.nikkeiview.com/blog/2008/05/17/twittering-the-apia-vote-town-hall/

Vien Dong (Vietnamese): www.viendongdaily.com/Contents.aspx?contentid=3888&item=Tin%20Hoa%20K%E1%BB%B3

Sing Tao (Chinese): www.singtaousa.com/051808/la080518a1.php

To listen to this show, click here: .

The Man of Two Havanas Director Speaks Out vs. U.S. Embargo of Cuba

Irvine -- In our next edition, airing Monday May 5 2008 at 9 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, and on the web simultaneously via kuci.org, we talk with the director of "The Man of Two Havanas".


Max Lesnik, the director's father, with Fidel Castro

Vivien Lesnik Weisman, in her documentary, takes a look back at her father and her life with him as he survived numerous bombing attempts by Cuban exiles in Little Havana, not unlike the situation of intimidation and domestic terrorism faced by some outspoken Vietnamese exiles in Little Saigon. We talk about her film and why she wanted to make it, as well as what it was like to live in Miami as a small girl. The film argues that the U.S. embargo against Cuba hurts the people in Cuba as well as Cuban exiles abroad.

Biographical info: Vivien Lesnik Weisman was born in Havana, Cuba. After graduating from Barnard College and New York Law School, she received an M.F.A. in directing from the UCLA School of Film and Television.

Her numerous awards include the presti- gious UCLA Spotlight Award for Best Dramatic Short, the Houston Film Festival Best Short Award and a Golden Eagle for Excellence in Latino Filmmaking.

A student of acclaimed documentarian Marina Goldovskaya, Weisman recently won IFP New York's Fledging Fund Award for a Work-in-Progress for The Man of Two Havanas, her first documentary. She resides in Santa Monica with her son, Richard Jr.

Her father, Max Lesnik, director of Radio Miami, has been the number one target of anti-Castro terrorists and considered the most controversial figure in the Cuban exile community. He was a prominent revolutionary when he left Cuba due to ideological differences with his then-friend, Fidel Castro. In Miami, he took a position that was both against the Cuban government as well as against the U.S. policy toward Cuba. Mr. Lesnik became the publisher of Replica. The magazine was a forum for debate, as well as for Mr. Lesnik's incendiary point of view. Mr. Lesnik's position soon evolved to include dialogue with the Cuban government and recently he revived his friendship with Castro. Mr. Lesnik has been the target of anti-Castro terrorists. They have tried unsuccessfully to murder him; nine bombs have gone off at his office in Little Havana.

The film recently aired in Orange County at the Newport Beach Film Festival.

Film web site: manoftwohavanas.com/About.html

The show airs during KUCI's pledge drive. Please support the only public-radio station from OC and to support shows like Subversity. To pledge, go to www.kuci.org/funddrive.html.

Meanwhile, the Asian Pacific Film Festival continues in Los Angeles: http://www.vconline.org/.

To listen to this show, click here: .

Films on Boys in Jordan; Women in Indonesia

Irvine -- For the April 28, 2008 edition of Subversity on KUCI, we talk with the directors of two new films from Jordan and Indonesia showing at the Newport Beach Film Festival and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival respectively.

In part 1 of the show, we talk with Director/Writer/Producer Amin Matalqa about his new film, "Captain Abu Raed" which screened at Sundance (where it won the World Cinema Audience award this year) and is the first feature film from Jordan in decades. Set in contemporary Jordan, the title character is a lonely janitor at Amman's international airport who befriends a group of neighborhood boys. Matalqa immigrated to the U.S. from Jordan at age 13, who decided to move from the telecommunications industry in Ohio to become a filmmaker in Los Angeles. Among the cast members is established Jordanian actor Nadim Sawalha, in the title role. Sawalha has been featured in British televsion as well as in two James Bond films, "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "The Living Daylights." He also appeared in "Syriana" opposite George Clooney. Sawalha won the 2007 best actor award at the Dubai International Film Festival.

Captain Abu Raed is the closing night film of the Newport Beach Film Festival, on Thursday, 1 May, at the Regency Lido Theatre in Newport Beach.

Film festival site: http://www.newportbeachfilmfest.com/

Film showing info: newportbeach.bside.com/2008/films/captainaburaed_newportbeach2008

Trailer: " blog.spout.com/2008/01/23/sundance-trailer-captain-abu-raed/

In part 2, we talk with Co-director Fatimah Tobing Rony, a UCI film and media studies professor. "Chants of Lotus" (Perempuan Punya Cerita) is a four-part film dissecting the social situation of women in frenetic, modern-day Indonesia. The film stars some of the major Indonesian actresses and the premiere showing in Indonesia was heavily censored. This Los Angeles showing is of the 35 mm original print, and uncensored. The film has its U.S. premiere Sunday, May 4, at 5 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America, Theater 2 as part of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

Film festival site: http://www.vconline.org/

Film showing info: www.vconline.org/festival/program.cfm?program_id=38

Trailer: www.kalyanashira.com/perempuanpunyacerita/trailer_tinggi.php

To listen to the entire Subversity show, click here: