Pearson World Cinema Series
World Cinema Series 2023-2024: Global Youth: Agency and Resistance
World Cinema Series 2023-2024: Global Youth: Agency and Resistance
World Cinema Series
Inspired by actual events, this teenage thriller is a unique social commentary on dreams, class, and unfulfilled expectations in contemporary Chile. Three teenage girls from a Santiago shanty town set in motion a plan to climb buildings and plunder expensive apartments. All they want is to have all the cool and trendy stuff they see advertised in TV commercials and department stores. Word spreads and soon enough they became the notorious “spider thieves.” There will be a post screening Q&A hosted by Professor Manuel Chavez with special guest speakers Prof. Priscilla & Gustavo Gac-Artigas
Free EventWorld Cinema Series
We Are the Best! is a story of three young misfit girls growing up in the early ‘80s Stockholm. Pixieish, mohawk-sporting Klara and her best friend Bobo are 13-year-old rebels looking for a cause. Despite having no instruments—or discernible musical talent—the two put all their energy into forming an all-girl punk band, recruiting their shy, classical guitar-playing schoolmate Hedwig as a third wheel. With tender affection for its young characters, We Are the Best! paints a joyous and sharply observant portrait of the rebellious spirit of youth and growing up different. There will be a post screening Q&A hosted by Professor Mihaela Moscaliuc with special guest speaker Prof. Joe Rapolla.
Free EventWorld Cinema Series
Young Wadjda dreams of owning a green bicycle. She wants to race a boy from the neighborhood, but the law prohibits girls from riding bikes. Just as she is losing hope, she hears about a cash prize for a Koran recitation competition at her school. Wadjda decides to earn the cash to fulfil her dream.
There will be a post screening Q&A hosted by Professor Claude Taylor with special guest speaker Prof. Saliba Sarsar.
Free EventWorld Cinema Series
A family embarks on an annual tormenting journey along with 200 other million peasant workers to reunite with their distant family, and to revive their love and dignity as China soars as the world’s next super power.
There will be a post screening Q&A hosted by Professor Chris DeRosa with special guest speaker Prof. Mel Brzycki.
World Cinema Series
Youth Unstoppable: My Decade in the Youth Climate Movement (formerly An Inconvenient Youth) captures the vibrant untold story of the global youth climate movement. Decisions made today are shaping the world they will live in, and they are no longer willing to sit idly as the planet is degraded for the short term gain of the older generations. Director Slater Jewell-Kemker has been interviewing celebrities and politicians about the environment since the age of ten, now she is telling the stories of these remarkable young people on the front lines of climate change. The feature documentary also gives life to a thriving online community, already forming, that will continue as a youth focused environmental social network. This is the story of the youth of today fighting for their planet, their future.
There will be a post screening Q&A hosted by Professor Marina Vujnovic with special guest speaker Prof. Catherine Duckett.
Free EventWorld Cinema Series
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film As We Forgive (2009). Directed by Laura Waters Hinson and narrated by Mia Farrow comes the award-winning documentary of two Rwandan women who struggle with the face-to-face encounter with the men who slaughtered their families during the 1994 genocide. These women and men speak for a nation still wracked by the grief of a genocide that killed one in eight Rwandans. Overwhelmed by an enormous backlog of court cases, the government released 50,000 perpetrators back to the very communities they helped to destroy. Without the hope of full justice, Rwanda has turned to a new solution of reconciliation. Come experience through their eyes the journey from death to life through forgiveness.
Past EventWorld Cinema Series
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnian, 2020). The film dramatizes the events of the Srebrenica massacre, during which Serbian troops sent Bosniak men and boys to death in July 1995 led by Serbian convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić. Named for its protagonist, Quo Vadis, Aida? exposes the events through the eyes of a mother named Aida, a schoolteacher who works with the United Nations as a translator. After three and a half years under siege, the town of Srebrenica, close to the northeastern Serbian border, was declared a UN safety zone in 1993 and put under the protection of a Dutch battalion working for the UN.
Past EventWorld Cinema Series
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film Budrus (Israeli/Palestinian/American, 2009). Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites Palestinian political factions and invites Israeli supporters to join an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the front lines. Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today.
Past EventWorld Cinema Series
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film The Clay Bird (Bengali, 2002). Set against a 1960’s backdrop leading up to Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, THE CLAY BIRD tells the story of Anu, a boy sent away by his father to an Islamic school. Far from his family and the warmth of his region’s Hindu festivities, Anu struggles to break out of his shell and adapt to the school’s harsh monastic life. As the political divisions in the country intensify, an increasing split develops between the school’s students, just as Anu’s parents find themselves growing apart. Rather than be torn in half, Anu must decide which side he falls upon in this complex tale of tolerance, diversity, and the practice of Islam in a crises-ridden world.
Past EventWorld Cinema Series
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film Korkoro (France, 2009). In this passionate WWII drama, a tightly-knit family of Gypsies journeys through occupied France, trying to avoid the violent Vichy patrols. Directed with wit and vigor by Tony Gatlif (Latcho Drom), Korkoro unearths the hidden story of the Romany people’s joys and struggles during the war.
Past EventWorld Cinema Series
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Living on the Edge: Displacement, Identity, and Resilience” by analyzing the message and impact of the Minari (US-Korea, 2020). A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to an Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, Minari shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home. The discussion of the film will be led by Claude Taylor, professor in the department of Communication.
Past Event
