Chinese films, dancer award, good shows

Chinese film to USC
USC just received a big donation of Chinese films, making it one of the biggest repositories of movies from the People's Republic in the U.S. The donation contains 650 individual titles on 35 mm and 16 mm film and 1,500 DVDs dating back to 1949.
The formal presentation was made the Saturday, Oct. 24 at the Thomas Cooper Library. Yu Youxue of Beijing Language and Culture University and Dafeng Zhong of The Chinese National Film Archive and the Beijing Film Academy gave brief talks at the event.
Among the films are documentaries of life in China, animated films and feature movies including Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli’s “The Spring River Flows East” (1947), Zie Jin’s “Two Stage Sisters” (1964), Zifeng Ling’s “Rickshaw Boy,” an internationally acclaimed 1982 film. Documentary titles include films about the visit of the Chinese table tennis team to the United States in 1972, China’s wildlife, important natural and historic sites in China, including the Yangtze River headwaters and the Great Wall.
USC has an extensive collection of newsreel films dating back to 1919.

Dance professor lands top award
USC dance professor Susan Anderson got a surprise award Friday, Oct. 23. The long-time professor won the Governor’s Professor of the Year Award which almost never goes to anyone in the arts.
Anderson joined the university in 1975. She helped established a dance major at the university a few years ago and pushed for a new dance teaching facility.
The professor of the year award is administered through the S.C. Commission on Higher Education and has been given since 1988.
(from left USC President Harris Pastides, Anderson, USC provost Michael Amiridis and Patricia Pastides.)

Brilliant in Berlin
Jonathan Brilliant, who relocated from Charleston to Columbia earlier this year, hasn't been spending much time in his new home. He's been creating his coffee stirrer sculptures all over the place and just completed one in Berlin (pictured)
He'll be doing a piece for Eye Level Art in Charleston next month and the USC art department gallery in January.

Columbia composer's new work gets premiere
The world premiere of Columbia composer Meira Warshauer's "Tedeeyah" -Concerto for Shofar/Trombone took place in Wilmington, N.C., last weekend. The Wilmington Symphony Orchestra peformed the piece with soloist on shofar (ram's horn) and trombone player Haim Avitsur.
It will be played by the Brevard Symphony Nov. 15 and the USC Symphony in Columbia Nov. 17.
The symphony was commissioned by the three orchestras.

Don't miss these shows
Only a few days remain to see exhibitions by David Yaghjian of Columbia and Philip Morsberger of Augusta - and you should not miss them.
The shows are up through 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27 at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, 808 Lady St. They're the product of if Art Gallery. Call (803) 238-2351. (You can read more about the show by going to the Thursday, Oct. 15 posting on Carolina Culture.)

And the shortest review of the mostest shows
I was in Charleston Thursday and Friday for the openings of Brian Rutenberg's solo show at the Gibbes Museum of Art - it looks great. Only about a dozen paintings and they really occupy the huge upstairs ballroom gallery. (That's him in the gallery.)

The College of Charleston's Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art opened its new gallery (left) with a solo exhibition by the artist Aldwyth. The space is huge - probably the size of two big downstairs galleries at the Columbia Museum. The show is brilliant - although you should probably set aside five or six hours to see it. (My photos can't do justice to the space, the show or how damn many people jammed in there the other night.)
(You can read more about these in the Thursday, Oct. 22 posting.)

I took a quick run through of the Ansel Adams show at the Columbia Museum of Art Saturday - unbelievably beautiful photos of unbelievably beautiful places.
The 50 works donated to the museum by collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel is much more interesting and less obscure than I thought it would be. This is a very important addition to the museum.
More on all these later.