Markus Nornes was just in Japan for the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, which he has worked on in a variety of roles over the last 25 years. He participated in an onstage dialogue about Kore-eda Kazuhiro's 1993 documentary When Cinema Reflects the Times: Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. Professor Nornes also sat on a symposium reflecting on 25 years of independent documentary in mainland China, along with directors Feng Yan (middle), Du Haibin (second from left) and scholar Akiyama Tamako (far right). The main theme of the discussion was the key role the Yamagata festival played in the development of documentary on the mainland. Thanks to the support of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, director Du and Professor Nornes Skyped into this semester's seminar on Documentary back in Ann Arbor. Students studied a unit on Chinese documentary the week before, and had watched Du's 1428 on the 2008 Szechuan earthquake.