Keystone Education Salon｜Dai Jinhua: Film and the World We Inhabit
“Cinema may no longer be the fastest medium, but it remains a social apparatus and a vessel of memory that power has yet to fully tame.”
– Dai Jinhua, Mirror and Secular Myth
Do you remember the first time you stepped into a movie theater?
The vivid colors unfolding across the big screen. The immersive sights and sounds of an unfamiliar world. A sudden cut that takes your breath away, or a line of dialogue that seems to leap off the screen and linger with you long after the moment has passed.
Perhaps it was then that our remarkable relationship with cinema began. Through the stories of others, we come to understand ourselves. We travel beyond our own circumstances, encounter different lives, and return to our own world with a fresh perspective.
Yet today, we are surrounded by the irresistible appeal of short-form videos. If we can watch a summary of an entire film in just five minutes, why spend two hours in the darkness of a movie theater, waiting for a story to unfold?
Perhaps because what a film leaves us with extends far beyond the story itself. In an age when watching has never been easier, the art of watching attentively has become all the more precious.
Keystone Academy’s Education Salon is honored to welcome Dai Jinhua, Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University, Director of the Center for Film and Cultural Studies at Peking University, and a renowned cultural scholar, to the Keystone Performing Arts Center.
Professor Dai’s work spans literature, feminist studies, society, and everyday life. For this special occasion, we invite you to return to one of her longstanding passions: cinema.
Through Professor Dai’s insights, we will explore how film can expand our horizons, deepen our understanding of ourselves and the times we live in, and help us rediscover a more thoughtful, authentic, and unhurried way of seeing.
In her book Films for Children, Professor Dai reflects on a personal regret: had she been able to encounter so many remarkable and diverse films during her childhood and youth, might her life have taken a different course? Might she have come to understand herself earlier, gained deeper insights into life, better understood society, and embraced the world with greater openness?
Join us as we return to cinema with Dai Jinhua.
Through listening and dialogue, let us rediscover the enduring art of watching – and open up new possibilities for understanding ourselves and exploring the world around us.
【Event Details】
Keystone Education Salon | Dai Jinhua
Guest Speaker: Dai Jinhua – Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Peking University; Director, Center for Film and Cultural Studies, Peking University; Cultural Scholar
Date: October 30, 2026
Time: 6:30–8:30 p.m.
Venue: Keystone Performing Arts Center
