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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS Editor’s note: Aastha Uprety’s essay reads Jia Zhangke’s Still Life and Razan AlSalah’s A Stone’s Throw as twin elegies of engineered upheaval, where dams and pipelines reorder earth and memory. Through…
![[ESSAY] “Energies of Displacement: Transformation in Jia Zhangke’s 𝑆𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒 and Razan AlSalah’s 𝐴 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒’𝑠 𝑇ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑤”by Aastha Uprety](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/energies-of-displacement-transformation-in-jia-zhangkes-still-life-and-razan-alsalahs-a-stones-throw-by-aastha-uprety.png?w=935)
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[REVIEW] “𝐾𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑎 and the Ethics of Resistance: Premchand’s Vision of Communal Harmony” by Fathima M
茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS [REVIEW] “Karbala and the Ethics of Resistance: Premchand’s Vision of Communal Harmony” by Fathima M Premchand (author), Haris Qadeer and Sami Rafiq (translators), Karbala, Sahitya Akademi, 2023. 232 pgs. The tragedy…
![[REVIEW] “𝐾𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑎 and the Ethics of Resistance: Premchand’s Vision of Communal Harmony” by Fathima M](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/02smpremchand-removebg-preview.png?w=494)
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Editor’s note: Anna Nguyen’s essay “A Dead Language” turns on an offhand slight, “No one speaks Vietnamese,” and worries it into grief, form, and theory. Between a father’s aphasic silence and a mother’s nightly monologues, Vietnamese persists. English, institutional and…
![[ESSAY] “A Dead Language” by Anna Nguyen](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/anna-nguyen.jpg?w=933)
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All entries on SUNDANCE 2026 [SUNDANCE 2026] “Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!: A Bird, a Body, and the Illusion of Depth” by Nirris Nagendrarajah Josef Kubota Wladyka (director), Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, 2026. 122 min. In Ha-Chan, Shake…
![[SUNDANCE 2026] “Josef Kubota Wladyka’s 𝐻𝑎-𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑛, 𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝑡𝑦!: A Bird, a Body, and the Illusion of Depth” by Nirris Nagendrarajah](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/image.png?w=1000)
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All entries on SUNDANCE 2026 [SUNDANCE 2026] “Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana: Beneath the Manicured Surface” by Nirris Nagendrarajah Click HERE to read all entries in Cha on Filipiñana. Rafael Manuel (director), Filipiñana, 2026. 100 min. A successful short does not necessarily yield a successful feature. One…
![[SUNDANCE 2026] “Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana: Beneath the Manicured Surface” by Nirris Nagendrarajah](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/image-1.png?w=1000)
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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS [FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “What We Keep: Memory, Migration, and Survival in M Lin’s The Memory Museum” by Susan Blumberg-Kason M Lin, The Memory Museum, Graywolf Press. 2026. 272 pgs. Nostalgia is a…
![[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “What We Keep: Memory, Migration, and Survival in M Lin’s 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑢𝑚” by Susan Blumberg-Kason](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/memory-museum-m-lin-cha-asian.jpg?w=1000)
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All entries on SUNDANCE 2026 [SUNDANCE 2026] “Wounded Souls in Stephanie Ahn’s Bedford Park” by Nirris Nagendrarajah Stephanie Ahn (director), Bedford Park, 2025. 121 min. I did not like Celine Song’s Past Lives (2023), not for lack of desire to…
![[SUNDANCE 2026] “Wounded Souls in Stephanie Ahn’s 𝐵𝑒𝑑𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑘” by Nirris Nagendrarajah](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/bedford-park.jpg?w=230)
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[SUNDANCE 2026] “Three Perspectives on a Haunting: Vera Miao’s 𝑅𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝑆𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠” by Nirris Nagendrarajah
All entries on SUNDANCE 2026 [SUNDANCE 2026] “Three Perspectives on a Haunting: Vera Miao’s Rock Springs” by Nirris Nagendrarajah Vera Miao (director), Rock Springs, 2026. 97 min. Gracie, played by Aria Kim One leaves Rock Springs with two impressions: that…
![[SUNDANCE 2026] “Three Perspectives on a Haunting: Vera Miao’s 𝑅𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝑆𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠” by Nirris Nagendrarajah](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/rock-springs-cha-nirris.jpg?w=1024)
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Editor’s note: Pál Dániel Levente, a guest of honour at the 2026 Brahmaputra Literature Festival, proposes a poetics of butterflies, stones, and blades. The five poems move within that range. India, New Delhi, Agra, and the Ganges become sites of…
![[ESSAY] “Butterflies, Stones, and Blades” by Pál Dániel Levente](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/shot-by-cerqueira-hemgxmfpsaw-unsplash.jpg?w=1024)
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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS Editor’s note: Jonathan Chan reads She Follows No Progression (Wendy’s Subway, 2024), edited by Juwon Jun and Rachel Valinsky, as a collective meditation on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, attending closely to…
![[ESSAY] “Reading the Gap: Indeterminacy, Translation, and Legacy in 𝑆ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠 𝑁𝑜 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛” by Jonathan Chan](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/she-follows-no-progression-a-theresa-hak-kyung-cha-reader-edited-by-juwon-jun-and-rachel-valinsky.png?w=579)
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