Kind of blue

German-Brazilian art photographer Juliana Borinski came up to join us for our end-of-year 'Arts Festival', after spending the previous week at our parent school in Hong Kong. 

She showed us a slideshow of some of her work, gave talks on her fascination with the history of photography, and led some workshops in which Art and Film students had an opportunity to play around with some long-exposure contact development processes to create collages. A technique using albumen (egg white), similar to the silver nitrate process used by pioneer photographers in the 1800s, producing sepia-coloured images, was a limited success; problems with 'fixing' the images meant that most of them soon faded and disappeared. These pictures created using cyanotype paper (long used to copy architectural drawings and engineering diagrams - 'blueprints') worked much better.

And she concluded her week with us by leading a small group of volunteers in creating this fun little stop-motion animation.

Juliana's visit was generously supported by the school's Annual Fund.

Slideshows by Mr Murphy

The music in the first slideshow is Endless Summer (artist uncredited) and in the second Skating (by Vince Guaraldi), both part of the iPhoto music library licensed by Apple for royalty-free use.

Design IDE Fashion Show - another look

Hangzhou Motu Creative, the events company which helped us to stage the Fashion Show that was the climax of our Design IDE week in mid-April, has just shared with us their professionally shot film of the event, which is naturally a rather slicker affair than the short and long records of the event which I produced (well, they had high-quality cameras - and a crane!). It's amazing that this was only 7 or 8 weeks ago; it feels as though years have gone by since - such is the frenetic pace of life here at CIS Hangzhou.

We have a lot of events planned to greet our parents as they visit for this Farewell Weekend - but nothing quite as grand as this!

Not filmed by Mr Murphy

Yet more highlights from the Shanghai Ultimate tournament

In addition to the extended highlights (and complete films!) I posted a few days ago of the quarter-final (in which CIS Hong Kong beat CIS Hangzhou, but got a bit of a scare early on) and the final (which CIS Hong Kong won in style - yay!) of last month's Shanghai Open Ultimate Tournament for youth teams, I've also made a short film of highlights of the first day's round-robin games, featuring both CIS teams.

Filmed by Mr Murphy

More frisbee magic!

Although our Hangzhou Ultimate team were disappointed to lose out to the parent school's team at the quarter-final stage of last month's Shanghai Open Youth Tournament, they took consolation from the fact that CIS Hong Kong then went on to even more convincing victories in the semi-final and final. The final was a tough test for them, though, as they found themselves re-matched with the very able Nanmo side - the only team to have managed to beat them during the previous day's round-robin games. Above are the highlights of an excellent game. (Our own Abigail Smith was loaned to the HK team for the weekend, and made a valuable contribution in this final.) 

The CIS Hong Kong team - most of whom learnt the game with us here in Hangzhou last year - has now become truly formidable at Ultimate; their movement and passing is often quite breathtaking to watch. Here are a couple of my favourite moments from the Shanghai semi-final.

A complete film of the final can be seen here. [Well, nearly complete. I'm afraid missed a few things, as the majority of the points were scored at the end of the field furthest from me, and the crowd on the near touchline often obscured my view.]

Filmed by Mr Murphy

Parents' Weekend Choir Performance - November 2014

Since our parents are about to descend on us for the second and final time at the end of this week, this seems an apt time to post this film I made of one of the key entertainments at our first parents' weekend back in November. During Saturday morning break our whole-school choir, conducted by our Director of Music Tama Karena, greeted their parents with a performance of the Zambian hymn Bonse Aba (accompanied by our African drumming troupe), and followed up with sentimental Chinese folk song Mo Li Hua (茉莉花). Andy Ji played the erhu.

Filmed by Mr Murphy

Another first: our very own MUN conference

Our MUN Club here in Hangzhou has been exceptionally active this year, largely thanks to the energetic leadership of Emily Duncan. Together with other leading lights Enrique Chuidian and Flora Xiao she decided to round off the year by staging a full one-day conference, CISMUN, on our campus last Sunday. 

Unfortunately, they were not able to entice other Hangzhou schools to join in the event as they had hoped, but very nearly half of our own student body participated as committee chairs, delegates, or administrative assistants - and for the majority of them, it was their first experience in that role. What we learned from the day was that pizza and cookies can secure world peace... unless Enrique is chairing the Security Council.

Slideshow by Mr Murphy

The music is Skating by Vince Guaraldi, part of the iPhoto music library licensed by Apple for royalty-free use.

Ultimate showdown!

Two weeks ago a large party of frisbee enthusiasts, led by their coach Wang Lu, went to Shanghai to compete in the 3rd Shanghai Open Ultimate Tournament for youth teams, hosted on the Pudong campus of the Shanghai American School. As Fate would have it, after grabbing a couple of wins in the first day's group games we found ourselves drawn against CIS Hong Kong in Sunday morning's first quarter-final. The match-up gained additional poignancy from the fact that most of the Hong Kong team were members of last year's inaugural Hangzhou cohort who had learnt how to play Ultimate here from Coach Mentors Wang Lu and Eric Vallone.

Our energetic defense knocked the HK team out of their stride for the first 20 minutes or so, and we were well in the game until half-time, but then superior experience made itself felt. It was a fantastic game from both sides.

The complete match can be seen here.

Filmed by Mr Murphy

TEDx Music (3)

At the climax of our inaugural TEDx event last Thursday former Coach Mentor and now Chinese teacher Wang Lu rounded off his talk about his passion for African drumming by inviting some friends from the Drum Circle he founded a few years ago at Zhejiang University to join him on stage for a performance. This piece is called Kassa, a traditional harvest celebration song from north-east Guinea. 

 Filmed by Mr Murphy

TEDx Music (2)

Another of the musical interludes in last week's TEDx event was this group improvisation by Karis Tao (keyboards, vocals), Austin Lam (guitar), and Jasmine and Georgina Savage and Enrique Chuidian (vocals).

Filmed by Mr Murphy

A day out in Shaoxing

To celebrate the end of regular classes and assessments, yesterday our Chinese department led a day trip to nearby Shaoxing, one of the quaint Jiangnan water towns, famous for its 臭豆腐 and its dark brown wine. In the morning we visited the ancestral home of the great writer Lu Xun, and in the afternoon went to the beautiful Shen Garden, celebrated as one of the most romantic places in China through its association with Song Dynasty lovers Lu You and Tang Wan.

Slideshow by Mr Murphy

The music is called Soft, apparently by a group called Washed Out - part of the iPhoto music library licensed by Apple for royalty-free use.

TEDx Music (1)

One of the highlights of last week's inaugural TEDx Youth event at CIS Hangzhou was this performance of The Cranberries' Linger by Emily Duncan and Jae Lamb.

Filmed by Mr Murphy

TEDx highlights

This Thursday afternoon in our theatre we staged our first TEDx conference, an event entirely organised by students: Jasmine and Georgina Savage and Enrique Chuidian.

Coach Mentor Jean Yap arranged the technical support, with assistance from Lauren Justice, Jennifer Chan, Shanyu Hou, and Celeste Yau.

Tristan Wong co-ordinated the filming, with additional camerawork by Jae Lamb, Samantha Koo and yours truly.

Tristan will try to prepare one or more official commemorative films of the event, bringing together bits of the best of all four camera angles. But for now, here is a 'rush' of my footage. Watch out for more over the next week or so.

Filmed by Mr Murphy

You can see all the contributions to our inaugural TEDx event at the following links:


Speakers

Mia Kriegel  -  Embracing change

Tiffany Ng  -  Celebrating your weirdness

Tippy Pei & Dominic Law  -  Hong Kong public schools

Sabrina Chan  -  Falling in love with a city

Katie Eu  -  Being nice on social media

Wang Lu  -  The magic of African drumming



Music

Emily Duncan & Jae Lamb  -  'Linger' (by The Cranberries)


Karis Tao, Austin Lam, Jasmine Savage,
Georgina Savage & Enrique Chuidian  -  group musical improvisation


Wang Lu and friends  -  African Drumming: 'Kassa' - a traditional harvest song from Guinea

The Big Match: doing battle with GYS on the football pitch

Here are some highlights from Monday's re-match against the football team of our Chinese host school, Greentown Yuhua. When we played them near the start of the year, it was an exhausting 0-0 draw. They got a rather better result this time. (I'm afraid my camerawork wasn't the best on this, and I missed to capture one of our goals altogether. The final score was 4-2 to GYS.)

A (very nearly) full film of the match can be seen here. 

Filmed by Mr Murphy

TEDx is here!

As promised, here is a trailer for this afternoon's TEDx Youth event here at CIS Hangzhou, which has been organised by Jasmine and Georgina Savage and Enrique Chuidian.

A film by Tristan Wong

TEDx draws nigh

Students are staging a small TEDx conference on Thursday afternoon. Here is a very short promo Tristan Wong made to advertise the event. He promises me he has a more substantial trailer nearly ready too.

A film by Tristan Wong

SOHCAHTOA

In this video Anthony Lauderdale and his team used a parody of the Wiz Khalifa song Black and Yellow to illustrate the trigonometry mnemonic SOHCAHTOA for their final presentation in the Maths IDE back in March. The other members of the team were Tippy Pei, Adam Guo, Kate Bradley, Shanyu Hou, Constance Lam, and Lauren Mok.

A film by Anthony Lauderdale

Maths is REAL (oh, yes it is!)

Adrian Lee led his team's demonstration of why "Maths is REAL" in this film made for their final presentation in the Maths IDE activity at the end of March. The other members of his team were Tiffany Ng, Jennifer Chan, Vivian Gu, Angela Zhang, Vrithik Mehta, and Will Baxter-Bray.

A film by Tiffany Ng

'Science Week' revisited (4)

For her 'Science Week' project, Jasmine Savage chose to freeze things with liquid nitrogen - and then SMASH them. 

It looks very pretty. And very cathartic!

'Science Week' revisited (3)

Ingrid Tsang and her GYS study partner Chen Jun Lei (陳駿磊) chose to investigate the physics of skateboarding for their 'Science Week' project. They were able to enlist the help of one of Hangzhou's top skateboarding enthusiasts, Feng Zi (風子) to demonstrate a couple of crucial moves. [This film runs twice: first in English, then in Chinese.]

'Science Week' revisited (2)

In our 'Science Week' last month, Jennifer Allardice and Ariana Beaver, together with their GYS partners Jackie and Tony, decided to use liquid nitrogen to make a super-quick Green Apple Sorbet. Looks yummy! 

It would have been more economical if they could have used some of the apples that Adrian smashed in his martial arts demonstration (the first film in our 'Science' series this week) - why didn't we think of that?

'Science Week' revisited (1)

A number of student teams prepared short videos as part of the final exhibit for their 'Science Week' projects last month. This week I'll be sharing a few of the best. Here we start with martial arts enthusiast Adrian Lee (assisted behind-the-scenes by his GYS study partner Martin Yang) analysing the physics of nunchuks, etc....

Driven to abstraction!

I shot so much video during our Science Fair a few weeks back that much of it had to end up "on the cutting-room floor" (as we used to say in the good old days). Here's a montage of some of those previously unused clips, some visually arresting little oddities I got distracted by while out and about with 'Marty' that day. [I've recently given all our cameras the names of famous film directors. The one I usually use with our 'Fig Rig' is named in honour of the legendary Mr Scorsese.]

A film by Mr Murphy

The music is Surf Rider by The Lively Ones (perhaps best known as the end credit music from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction).

Three weeks ago today....

Gosh, was it as recently as that?! It seems like... months ago.

I have already shared a highlights reel of the Fashion Show with which we concluded our 'Design Week' IDE, but here is the full event.

Filmed by Mr Murphy

Let's go fly a kite!

Yesterday Wang laoshi and our Chinese Department led an afternoon outing to the West Lake Kite Museum, where students enjoyed painting their own traditional kites. 

Flying them afterwards was a bit more of a problem.... in a high-walled courtyard full of trees! Getting our creations airborne required some ingenuity, and quite a lot of legwork.

[Special thanks to Jasmine Savage for the line of the afternoon!!!]

Filmed by Mr Murphy

The music here is.... er, well.... I don't know. Can anyone help me? It's a traditional Chinese (western Chinese, Central Asian...) piece, I believe. I've owned it for ages; but, although I bought it in China, the track information is displayed in Japanese (and is strangely insusceptible to Google Translate)!

Caught Reading!

The Library Committee has been running a photography competition for the past few weeks on the theme of being "Caught Reading" in somewhat unusual circumstances. Several students and a few members of staff (although they can't be "in competition") have given their creativity a free rein on this. Here are some of the best examples. 

The results are due to be announced in Assembly next Monday. 

Slideshow compiled by Mr Murphy; photographs by numerous members of the CIS Hangzhou community

The music here is an adaptation of Pharrell Williams' Happy by Youtuber Adreanna Pankow.