Thursday, October 16 at 6:00 pm – Community Room
The 2025 Syracuse International Film Festival is coming to the library with a special screening of the documentary Tiananmen Tonight, featuring an introduction by Dr. Yamin Xu of Le Moyne College, who served as a consultant for the film. Registration required (walk-ins welcome as space allows).
Synopsis:
As student unrest brews in Beijing in the late 1980s, Dan Rather’s CBS Evening News and the entire news division face declining ratings and deep budget cuts.
But like defiant outlaws, Rather and his team race to China ahead of the media crush where they bravely inform an anxious American public about China’s unfolding demonstrations, emerging student leadership, and bloody confrontations while fending off government censors and coping with the brutal arrest of a star reporter. In a fit of daring, the team also shelters the most-wanted dissidents in China.
Ironically, from the embers of the failed democracy movement, CBS News re-claims the number one spot in the evening news race after a long absence. Although CBS would, in time, cede ratings and international coverage to cable TV, Rather and company’s China gambit cannot be erased. They modeled deep and far-reaching reporting, a fading value in 2025.
As China looms today and mainstream news media founders in America, our film examines the Tiananmen Square reporting as a pinnacle of broadcast journalism, a story of journalistic commitment and guts that helped keep America informed in the spirit of democracy. It’s a necessary example in today’s uncertain information environment.
Dr. Yamin Xu’s bio:
“I received my B.A. from Nankai University (China), M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from University of California at Berkeley. I had taught in several different universities in both California and Alabama before I joined the Le Moyne faculty here in 2003. Besides World Civilization, I teach East Asian surveys from Neolithic origins to the present. My East Asian seminars are organized around the topics concerning modern East Asian societies, governments, cultures, intellectual traditions, religious practices, gender issues, and international relations. I have valuable firsthand experiences of living and working in China. I receive all kinds of daily information about China in Chinese and keep a close contact with people there. This can help me to bridge the gap between the East and West while teaching in Le Moyne classroom. My research interests primarily focus on late imperial and modern China. I am currently working on a number of projects dealing with issues concerning Chinese state, society, and modernity from a perspective of the city of Beijing.”
