Thursday, October 25, 2018 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Lindner Family Commons Suite 602
The Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW Washington, DC 20052
The Elliott School Gender Equality Initiative, Sigur Center for Asian Studies, International Development Studies and Kirana Productions cordially invite you to a film screening and discussion of Amae, Thamee, Ama (Mother, Daughter, Sister). Providing opening remarks will be the film’s director, Jeanne Marie Hallacy.
About the Film:
Mother, Daughter, Sister exposes the Burmese military’s practice of using rape as a weapon of war and gives voice to Kachin and Rohingya women activists calling for justice for these crimes. The film revolves around the stories of four women: Shamima, a volunteer counselor working with survivors of military rape in the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, Dil Kayas, a teenage survivor and San Lung and Lu Ra, the sister and mother of two Kachin school teachers brutally raped and killed in 2015, allegedly by the Burmese military. Powerful testimonies from survivors, witnesses and activists explore the far-reaching impact of sexual violence upon women and communities, woven with stories of courageous women calling for justice and a unified stand for an end to impunity.
About the Speakers:
Myo Win, Director of Smile Education and Development Foundation
Seng Raw, Deputy General Security of the Kachin Alliance
Jeanne Marie Hallacy’s films are used for human rights education and advocacy. Hallacy develops relationships with her subjects to open their worlds through her lens; she can interview government ministers and slum dwellers and get a story. Her cross-cultural communications skills are an asset to covering issues from refugees to labor rights to people living with HIV. Based in Southeast Asia for decades, she worked with AsiaWorks Television, a regional production company to produce feature news for global broadcasters and advocacy videos for United Nations agencies and international NGOs. She is based in San Francisco and Bangkok and is available to travel worldwide.
Dr. Christna Fink joined the Elliott School in 2011. She is a cultural anthropologist who has combined teaching, research, and development work throughout her career. Her areas of expertise include Burma/Myanmar in particular and Southeast Asia more broadly, equitable development, gender and development, and civil society in ethnically diverse states.
Paul Heer is an adjunct professor at The George Washington University, where he received his Ph. D. in diplomatic history in 1995. During 2007-15 he served as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia—the senior analyst of East Asian affairs in the US Intelligence Community—in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A career officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, he began that career in 1983 as a political and foreign policy analyst on Southeast Asia before specializing on China as an analyst and analytic manager. He served on the staff of the President’s Daily Brief, and as a member of the CIA’s Senior Analytic Service and the Senior Intelligence Service. He is a recipient of the CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal and the DNI’s National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. Dr. Heer was a Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during 2015-16. He was the Visiting Intelligence Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations during 1999-2000 and was subsequently elected a Life Member of the Council. He holds a B.A. degree in history from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa; and an M.A. in history from the University of Iowa. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).
Bernard Adeney-Risakotta was born in China of British and American parents. He was founding director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta. He studied in Wisconsin, London, and Berkeley, where he taught for nine years before moving to Indonesia in 1991. Among his many publications is Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World.
Zhongtian Han, is a history Ph.D. student interested in modern East Asia and strategic studies. His research focuses on the strategic history of modern China and Japan.
Shweta Krishnan, is a PhD Candidate in the department of Anthropology at George Washington University. Her research interests include the anthropology of religion, science and the environment. Her current project explores religious revival amid riverine erosion in the island of Majuli, Assam.
Ichhya Pant, works at the intersection health, evaluation, data and information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a focus on vulnerable population such as immigrants, refugees, women and children. Currently, she serves as a Research Scientist focusing on monitoring and evaluation on the RANI Project which aims to 
We will be joined by guest speaker director Wei Te-Sheng (魏德聖), who is also the producer of “Kano.” Born in Tainan, director Wei graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, and only started his entertainment career after he completed the mandatory military service in Taiwan. His first directed movie “Cape No. 7” not only was a hit, but successfully brought life back to the Taiwan film industry. Director Wei will join us at the event and answer questions in the Q&A session after the film.
A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, James M. Scott is the author of Target Tokyo, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, The Christian Science Monitor and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His other works include The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award. His fourth book, Rampage, will be released on October 2, 2018. Scott lives with his wife and two children in Mt. Pleasant, SC.
