THE
GLOBE
AT THE
MOVIES
SYMPOSIUM
APRIL 24, 2014
Bamboo Room (2650) and Reading Room
Center for Campus Life
This event features film screenings and invited talks by film scholars and
directors.The public forum format is an opportunity for students
and faculty to ask probing questions about the film directors’
vision pertaining to complex issues faced by the
rapidly changing global community.
For more information please contact Dr. Elena Sommers (Department of English) at [email protected]
8.30 am - 8: 50 am: Coffee and pastries
8: 50 am - 9:10 am
Opening Remarks by Dr. James Winebrake,
Dean, College of Liberal Arts, and Dr. Elena
Sommers, Department of English
9:15 am - 10: 10 am
Dr. Hinda Mandell, RIT.
Screening and discussion: The Upside Down Book
Imagine a book that is so toxic that rigorous handwashing is required after coming into contact with it. This
book in question is a 1938 copy of Mein Kampf, Adolf
Hitler's political manifesto. Karen and Fred Mandell of
Boston, parents of filmmaker Hinda Mandell, have
displayed this book upside down on their bookshelf for
decades. Fred Mandell's uncle – a Jewish-American
soldier – brought home the book from Germany at the
end of World War II. With a bare-bones inscription on
the inside cover, the filmmakers – spearheaded by
director Matthew White – investigate the power of family
lore as they track down the original owners of the Mein
Kampf. "The Upside Down Book" seeks to build bridges
between two different families nearly 70 years after the
end of World War II.
10: 10 am - 10.35 am
Q&A with Dr. Hinda Mandell and
Matthew White
10: 35 am - 11: 20 am
Dr. Jennifer Creech, University of Rochester
“Reproduction as Resistance:
Motherhood in the East German Cinema.”
This talk is based on Professor Creech’s book manuscript,
Mothers, Comrades and Outcasts: East German Women’s
Films 1965 and Beyond, wherein she explores the
function of these films as an alternative public sphere, in
which official ideologies of socialist progress and utopian
collectivism are resisted. Emerging after the cultural freeze
of 1965, women’s films reveal a shift from overt political
critique to a covert politics located in the intimate,
problem-rich experiences of everyday life under socialism.
Through an analysis Evelyn Schmidt’s The Bicycle (1980),
Professor Creech shows how films that focus on so-called
“women’s concerns” – marital problems, motherhood, the
“second shift,” emancipation and residual patriarchy – use
female protagonists to critique dominant ideologies of
socialist subjectivity.
11: 20 am - 11:45 am: Discussion
11: 45 am - 12: 30 pm: Lunch
12: 30 pm - 2: 16 pm
Screening of The Return (Возвращение, 2003).
Director-Andrei Zviagintsev.
A mixture of psychological thriller and road movie, The
Return tells the story of two young brothers, who must
cope with the sudden and unexplained return of their
long absent father. Unusually close and notably protective
of each other's interests, the boys embark on a
destination-free road trip with the cryptic father after
years of gazing at his image on a torn photograph. But as
hopes for a caring parent metamorphose into fear of
abuse, a family getaway becomes the background for
self-discovery and the destruction of deeply rooted
emotional investments. As it turns out, the missing spots in
the two brothers’ pasts run deep, the distance between
imagined fatherhood and the man in its symbolic center is
breathtaking, and Andrei and Ivan's need for a newly
articulated relationship with parental guidance is a source
of impenetrable pain.
2: 20 -2: 35 pm
Dr. John Givens, University of Rochester
"Zviagintsev's Return as Second Coming:
The Anxiety of Belief in Russian Cinema."
2: 35 pm-3:05 pm
Discussion, The Return
3: 05 pm - 3: 40 pm
Dr. Dinah Holtzman, RIT
Dogtooth (Greece, 2009)
Director:Yorgos Lanthimos.
3: 40 - 5:10 pm
Screening of Kinderwald (2013)
Director, writer, producer: Lise Raven
Co-writer: Frank Bruckner
Pennsylvania 1854. German immigrant John Linden is
responsible for his brother's widow Flora and her two
young sons. When the boys disappear without a trace,
the neighboring community first helps, then turns their
back on the family. John and Flora must sacrifice
everything to bring the boys home.
5.10 pm - 5: 40 pm
Q&A with Lise Raven and Frank Bruckner
5:40 pm - 6:30 pm: Dinner
6: 30 pm-6: 50 pm
Screening of Carry On
Director:Yatao Li, RIT
A Chinese farmer witnesses atrocities committed by
the Japanese army in a neighboring village and tries to
save his family and his neighbors. Unfortunately, his
father dies at night and they get caught the day after.
What can he do to save his daughter?
6: 50 pm-7:15 pm
Q&A with Yatao Li
7: 15 pm-7: 45 pm
Screening of HAWA
Director: Arzouma Kompaore, RIT
HAWA is a heartfelt short narrative film about an
African immigrant couple struggling to find footing in a
new world with new rules and influences. When
starting a family is no more a priority for the
overworked and infertile cabbie husband Kader, his wife
Hawa begins to question her femininity, womanhood
and self worth in America. She questions the existence
and purpose of their fifteen year marriage, and what
future awaits them. Now trapped between who she
was in Africa and who she could be, Hawa has to make
a choice; weather the storm of uncertainty in the USA
or return to her native land.
7: 45 pm-8:15 pm
Q&A with Arzouma Kompaore.
Sponsored by: COLA Dean's office, Department of English, Department of Modern Languages and
Cultures, and Conable Endowment for International Studies