Series Site
April 2–19, 2026
Global cinema, both canonical and contemporary, was among the most lasting influences on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982), whose work across artist’s books, performance, and moving image probes questions of memory, language, and diaspora. Cha’s appreciation for film was shaped in the decade she spent as a student at UC Berkeley, from 1969 to 1978, during which time she worked at the Pacific Film Archive, attending screenings and talks by Chantal Akerman and Chris Marker, among others.
For the 1975–76 academic year, Cha studied film theory in Paris at the Centre d’Études Américaine du Cinéma; upon her return, she gained hands-on experience as a preparator at the University Art Museum and as an assistant director at the University’s Educational Television Office. After moving to New York in 1980, Cha worked as an editor for Tanam Press and served as the editor for Apparatus: Selected Writings, a collection of texts influenced by the Marxist, psychoanalytic, and semiotic theoretical currents of the 1970s, which together argued for a close examination of the ideological underpinnings of cinema. Long since out of print, the remarkable and understudied Apparatus features writings—many translated into English for the first time—by the theorists Bertrand Augst, Thierry Kuntzel, and Christian Metz, as well as texts by Roland Barthes, Maya Deren, Danièle Huillet, and the Dziga Vertov group.
Bringing together selections from Cha’s courses and her early films, Sentimental Education: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at the Pacific Film Archive maps the wide range of cinematic influences on a remarkably singular artist.
—Tausif Noor, Curatorial Associate