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FILMS: Flood and Jellyfish with Q&A: Thurs., March 7 and April 23

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Mabul (flood) will conclude the Sixth Annual Ring Family Wesleyan University Israeli Film festival, on Thursday, March 7 at 8 PM at the Goldsmith Family Cinema. The film is described as “one of the year’s most impressive-looking Israeli films” by Variety film reviewer Alissa Simon, and  is the winner of the best film and best cinematography categories at the Haifa International film festival (2010) as well as earning six nominations  for the Ophir (Israeli Academy Awards). Directed by Guy Nativ and co –written by Nativ and Noa Berman- Herzberg, the film  follows the complicated life of Yoni, a smart but underdeveloped boy, who is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. Yoni has to deal with bullying in school, uncommunicative parents and an older autistic brother who comes home right before the ceremony. Yoni is left to deal on his own with a brother he has not seen in ten years and who has become obsessed with Yoni’s Torah excerpt about Noah and the flood.

The film is 100 minutes and has English subtitles. Film critic Laura Blum will comment upon the film as well as conduct a question-answer session after the screening.

You can watch a video trailer at http:///iff.site.wesleyan.edu

Although this is the last movie in our Israeli Film Festival is it not the end. This year the Jewish and Israel Studies with the co- sponsorship of the Film Department is introducing a new event, Back by Popular Demand. On Tuesday, April 23, at 8pm at the Goldsmith Family Cinema the internationally acclaimed writer and film maker, Etgar Keret , will introduce and comment upon his film Jellyfish, winner at the Cannes Film Festival. Please mark your calendar for this exciting event, and as always I would be delighted to welcome you and your students  to the movies, Dalit Katz

Film/Lecture: “The Ultimate Wish: Ending the Nuclear Age” Fri., Nov. 30, 4-6 p.m.

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Fukushima and Nagasaki: Our film ties them together, as their links have become dangerously clearer. 

Sakue Shimohira was ten years old and hiding in a Nagasaki shelter when the nuclear bomb dropped on August 9, 1945. She survived and has dedicated her life to making sure that what happened to her will never happen to anyone again.  Today she continues to speak out and inspire people everywhere.

Sakue’s story of survival and its aftermath is the core of this powerfully moving documentary. We follow her, in the company of students Fumi and Haruka, as they talk to high school and college students in London, New York and Nagasaki, and we see Sakue in a gripping encounter with a Holocaust survivor. 

 

 

 

 

 

Hispanic Film Series: Academy-nominated “Chico & Rita” — 10/4

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Please join us tomorrow night  for the fifth film of our Hispanic Film Series that showcases new cinema from Latin America and Spain. We hope to see you there!

 CHICO & RITA

 

 Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando / 94 min. / 2012

Oscar®-winning director Fernando Trueba (The Age of Beauty) and famous artist Javier Mariscal, have teamed up to make Chico & Rita, an animated love story starring the music, culture and people of Cuba. Chico is a dashing piano player and Rita is an enchanting  Havana nightclub singer. When they meet, the sparks fly and they fall madly in love. An epic romance unfolds as the pair travels the glamorous stages of 1940s/1950s Havana, New York City, Las Vegas, Hollywood and Paris.    

Where: Goldsmith Family Cinema, Center for Film Studies
When:  Thursday, October 4th, 8 p.m. 

Free Admission 

 Presented as part of The Spanish Film Club series with the support of Pragda, the Secretary of State for Culture of Spain, and its Program for Cultural Cooperation with U.S. Universities. In collaboration with Wesleyanʼs Latin American Studies program and the Department of Romance Languages and Literaturesʼ Thomas and Catharine McMahon Fund. 

Hispanic Film Series: “The Cinema Hold-Up” — 9/27

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THE CINEMA HOLD-UP (ASALTO AL CINE):  Irina Gómez Concheiro / 2011 / México

The Cinema Hold Up is a vibrant, authentic, and wonderfully observed portrait of the tempo and texture of today’s Mexican youth culture. First-time feature director Iria Gómez Concheiro draws pitch-perfect performances from the talented ensemble cast and registers a strong and original voice in Mexican cinema. Negus, Chale, Sapo and Chata are teenagers who grew up in the same rundown district of Mexico City. They spend their days listening to hip-hop, smoking marihuana and fantasizing about the opposite sex. One day they have the bright idea of robbing a movie theater, jeopardizing the one sure thing they have in life – their friendship. An explosive, entertaining comedy with impeccable performances, this original, unpredictable debut establishes Iria Gómez Concheiro as a promising new voice in Mexican cinema. Gómez Conchiero acknowledges a debt to Italian neorealism and Brazilian Novo Cinema, and she has a liking for gritty locations, long tracking shots and non-pro actors. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

 

Where: Goldsmith Family Cinema, Center for Film Studies
When:  Thursday, September 27th, 8 p.m. 

Free Admission 

 
Presented as part of The Spanish Film Club series with the support of Pragda, the Secretary of State for Culture of Spain, and its Program for Cultural Cooperation with U.S. Universities. In collaboration with Wesleyanʼs Latin American Studies program and the Department of Romance Languages and Literaturesʼ Thomas and Catharine McMahon Fund. 

Hispanic Film Series: Post Mortem — 9/20, 8 p.m.

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Please join us tomorrow night for the third film of our Hispanic Film Series that showcases new cinema from Latin America and Spain. This week the turn is for the wonderful Chilean director Pablo Larraín. We hope to see you there!

 POST MORTEM:  Pablo Larraín / 98 min. / 2010 / Chile, Mexico, Germany

 

Pablo Larraín first broke onto the international film scene when Tony Manero premiered at the Cannes Directors´ Fortnight. This Chilean director has now followed up with visceral Post Mortem. Mario Cornejo is going about his daily business of writing autopsy reports at the military hospital in Santiago, when the Pinochet coup d´état shakes this heretofore apolitical character out of his state of apathy. This passionately executed film by Larraín has met with brilliant reviews, competing at the Venice Film Festival and nabbing secondplace at the Havana Film Festival´s Coral Awards. Post Mortem is neither areconstruction of the Pinochet days, nor an angry denunciation of the period. Instead, Larrain offers a borderline-surreal –Lynchian – black comedy to show, among other things, how easy it is for ordinary people to sleepwalk into a climate of atrocity, either as victims, collaborators, or as both. As in his first film, Larraín invests his characters with metaphoric undertones, suffusing the city of Santiago with a surreal visual texture that evokes the nightmarish landscape it was rapidly becoming.

 

Where: Goldsmith Family Cinema, Center for Film Studies
When: 8 p.m.       Free Admission 

 

Presented as part of The Spanish Film Club series with the support of Pragda, the Secretary of State for Culture of Spain, and its Program for Cultural Cooperation with U.S. Universities. In collaboration with Wesleyanʼs Latin American Studies program and the Department of Romance Languages and Literaturesʼ Thomas and Catharine McMahon Fund.

Film Screening: “My Neighbor, My Killer” with director Anne Aghion — 5/1, 5 p.m.

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Screening of “My Neighbor, My Killer”

& Discussion with Filmmaker Anne Aghion

Tuesday, May 1, 5:00pm Center for Film Studies

Gacaca (Ga-CHA-cha), which literally means “justice on the grass,” is a form of citizen-based justice which Rwandans decided to put into place in an attempt to deal with the crimes of the 1994 genocide. Filming for over a decade in a tiny rural hamlet, director Anne Aghion has charted the impact this experiment in transitional justice has had on survivors and perpetrators alike. Through their fear and anger, accusations and defenses, blurry truths, inconsolable sadness, and hope for life renewed, she captures the emotional journey to coexistence.

As a filmmaker, Anne Aghion has been drawn to places as far-ranging as rural Rwanda, the ice fields of Antarctica and the slums of Managua. She has been praised by critics, both as a director of unique and poetic vision, and a documentarian who conveys a strong sense of the people and places she covers. Her work has also earned her, among other honors, a UNESCO Fellini Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Emmy, and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival’s Nestor Almendros Award for courage in Filmmaking.

German Film Festival — 4/13 & 14

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You are invited to attend the  

GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL – (Re)imagining Post-Industrial Urbanity: Films of the Ruhr Area, Germany

in Downey House 113 on April 13 and 14, 2012

 We will be showing three films from this large post-industrial area in western Germany. The first film, Bang Boom Bang by Peter Thorwart, will be shown on Friday at 7:00 p.m. The other two-Losers and Winners, a documentary by Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken, and Solinoby Fatih Akin-will be screened on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., followed by a discussion. The introductory session by Sina Nitzsche, Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Oglethorpe University, and Kate Thorpe, Teagle Writing Fellow at Wesleyan will place these films in the context of the transformation through art and image-making that the region is experiencing.

The event is sponsored by the German House, German Studies Department, Writing at Wesleyan, and the Goethe Institute Boston.

South Indian Film Festival — April 5-28

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The series is called:  “Phoolan Devi and the Roots of Indian Rage”

Films, Dates, Locations:

Thursday, April 5—8pm at the Goldsmith Cinema, “The Bandit Queen”
1995. India. Dir: Shekhar Kapur. Biopic about Phoolan Devi, bandit leader in North India, 1980s. 119 min.

Saturday, April 7—2pm at the Powell Family Cinema, “Sholay”
1975. India. Dir: Ramesh Sippy. With Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra. 204 min.

Saturday, April 21—2pm at the Powell Family Cinema, “Pather Panchali”
1955. India. Dir: Satyajit Ray. Music by Ravi Shankar. 115 min.

Saturday, April 28—2pm at the Powell Family Cinema, “Eyes of Stone”
1989. India. Dir: Nilita Vachani. Documentary about demonic possession and goddess temples. 90 min. 

Phoolan Devi (a.k.a. the “Bandit Queen”) rose to fame as an outlaw in the rugged landscape of Bundelkhand in central/north India in the 1970s.  She surrendered to the authorities in 1983, was released from prison in 1994, elected to parliament in 1996, reelected in 1999, and was assassinated in 2001.  The film series is part of a wider “Phoolan Devi Opera Project,” a collaborative undertaking by the pianist-composer Gayathri Khemadasa (Fulbright professional scholar in residence at Wesleyan this year) and writer-producer-choreographer Jeff Hush (Wesleyan class of 1984).

Each film will be followed by a panel-led discussion.  Prof. William Pinch will be on the first panel, after “The Bandit Queen” screening.

Admission is free!

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