Join us for a screening of the film Perfect Blue (1997; dir. Satoshi Kon), followed by a conversation Lei Ping and Paige Griffith. 

Light refreshments will be served.

About the Film
Rising pop star Mima quits singing to pursue a career as an actress. After she takes up a role on a popular detective show, her handlers and collaborators begin turning up murdered. Harboring feelings of guilt and haunted by visions of her former self, Mima’s reality and fantasy meld into a frenzied paranoia.

About Lei Ping, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies and Chair of the Languages Department
Lei Ping holds a PhD in East Asian Studies from New York University. Her research centers on urbanism, cultural sociology, and social classes in Asian and global economies and societies. Her latest book, Shanghai Mundane: Survival and Revival of Bourgeois Sentiments under Chinese Socialism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) offers a new critical intervention into the studies of the paradox of Chinese socialism. She also teaches the course East Asian Pop Culture.

About the Screening Series
Presented by SexTech Lab in collaboration with the Philosophy Film Club and Ruff Cuts, the series is a cross-disciplinary initiative that engages with film as an intellectual and cultural work to be discussed, debated, and thought with. The series draws on New York City’s extraordinary density of critics, journalists, artists, filmmakers, and public scholars in our orbit, bringing them into dialogue with internal experts at The New School, moderated by students across departments and programs. Each event pairs a screening with dialogue that approaches cinema through historical, philosophical, political, and psychological lenses, showing how public debate, academic inquiry, and applied industry insight can sharpen one another.

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