Sessue Hayakawa

Once as popular as Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, Sessue Hayakawa was an internationally renowned silent film star and matinee idol. However, his fame as a romantic leading man and box office draw was short-lived.

Join us for a screening and discussion by Professor Daisuke Miyao of Hayakawa's 1919 film, The Dragon Painter, and hear about the meteoric rise and fall of this stellar talent and the ways that race, ethnicity, and nationality impacted his career.

Daisuke Miyao is Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Miyao is the author of Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema (Duke University Press, 2020), Cinema Is a Cat: A Cat Lover’s Introduction to Film Studies (University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema (Duke University Press, 2013), and Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also the editor of Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema (2014) and the co-editor of Transnational Cinematography Studies (2017) with Lindsay Coleman and Roberto Schaefer.