Still from Far East of Eden by Bryan Jackson.

Presented by the UB Humanities Institute in collaboration with the UB Distinguished Visiting Scholars Program.

Please join us for a screening of Far East of Eden, directed by Bruce Yonemoto, featuring Karen Finley and George Takei. This event is free and open to the public.

6:00 pm | Reception | complimentary food by Sato with cash beer & wine bar benefiting Hallwalls

7:00 pm | Screening | Far East of Eden (dir. Bruce Yonemoto, 24 mins., 2016)

Far East of Eden is an experimental film short developed by internationally recognized artists Karen Finleyand Bruce Yonemoto. The work, which was developed by Finley and Yonemoto during their tenure as visiting artists at the Lucas Artists Residency in 2016, was commissioned by Montalvo Arts Center.

Far East of Eden draws on the story of Senator James Duval Phelan, three-time mayor of San Francisco and the first popularly elected California Senator. In 1912, Phelan built Villa Montalvo as his country estate in Saratoga, California. Villa Montalvo was Senator Phelan’s favorite home and a center of artistic, political and social life in Northern California. Upon his death in 1930, he bequeathed the Villa and surrounding property as a public park, asking that they be used “as far as possible for the development of art, literature, music, and architecture by promising students.” Decades later, this would become Montalvo Arts Center.

During his political career, Phelan was an outspoken supporter of various anti-immigrant policies, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924. While researching Montalvo as the site for a new project, Finley and Yonemoto were struck by Phelan’s anti-Asian sentiments, especially as expressed in his essay The Japanese Evil in California. Noting a disturbing parallel between Senator Phelan’s nativist views and the ethnic and religious intolerance that has gained currency in our contemporary political discourse–including calls for walled borders, forced removals of minorities, and military-assisted deportation–the artists were inspired to use the events of yesterday to examine the policies of today and affect change for tomorrow.

The world premiere of Far East of Eden took place at Montalvo Art Center in September 2016. It was subsequently screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in February 2017.

Click here for complete production details and credits.

The screening will be followed by Zoom conversation with Karen Finley and Bruce Yonemoto.

This event is organized by the UB Humanities Institute in partnership with the CAS Distinguished Visiting Scholars Program, co-sponsored by the Asia Research Institute and the Dept. of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies.