International Lens, a film series with a global perspective, uses film screenings as a forum to promote conversation among Vanderbilt’s diverse community of students, faculty, and staff. International Lens strives to transcend geographic, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and political boundaries by facilitating conversation and greater cross-cultural understanding through cinema. The series is a partnership among the Office of the Dean of Students and academic departments, centers, and programs.

Admission is FREE and open to the public. All films in Sarratt Cinema at 7 p.m.
unless otherwise noted

For additional information call 322-6400. For parking maps click here. / Subscribe to the International Lens Mailing List

The Visitor

Wednesday, September 2
Presented by:
Amnesty International, Vanderbilt Chapter; facilitated by: Gregory Barz, Associate Professor of Musicology, Blair School of Music and Faculty Head of House, North Hall, The Commons
USA (2008) Dir: Thomas McCarthy.
A homeless Syrian musician, Tarek, and his Senegalese girlfriend take up residence in the apartment of an aging academic, Walter. The two men’s friendship deepens as the young musician teaches the older man to play the African drum. The young man and his music awaken Walter to a new world, so when Tarek, an undocumented immigrant, is arrested and held for deportation, Walter finds himself compelled to help his friend. In English, French, Arabic, and Russian with English subtitles. Rated PG-13. 104 minutes.

Planet B-Boy

Friday, September 4
Join us for a Hip Hop Dance Demo immediately following the screening!
Presented by: Korean Students and Scholars Association, Vanderbilt Dance Program
USA (2008) Dir: Benson Lee.
Welcome to the international world of “b-boying,” the New York street dance, also known as breakdancing, which has become a medium of expression for young people around the world. Unfolding against the vivid backdrops of Osaka, Paris, Seoul and Las Vegas are the stories of young men who struggle to realize their dreams despite the misunderstanding of society and their families. The b-boys’ lives collide in Germany where their skills are put to the ultimate test as crews from 18 nations vie to be World Champion. English. Rated PG-13. 95 minutes. Funding provided in part by Vanderbilt Student Government and the Multicultural Leadership Council.

The Silence Before Bach (Die Stille vor Bach)

Wednesday, September 9
Presented by: Robert Fry, Senior Lecturer, Blair School of Music
Spain (2007) Dir: Pere Portabella.
A promenade through eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Europe guided by the music of J.S. Bach and Felix Mendelssohn. Arising from a defined musical structure, this film looks at the profound relationship between image and music, where the latter is not merely conceived as subsidiary to the image but is a subject of narration in its own right. In Spanish, German, and Catalan with English subtitles. Not Rated. 102 minutes. Financial support provided by Mimi and Scott Manzler.

Quantum Hoops

Dean of Students Special Event
Thursday, September 10
Presented by: Vandy Fanatics. Post-Screening panelists: Melanie Balcomb, Head Coach, Women’s Basketball; Kevin Stallings, Head Coach, Men’s Basketball; A.J. Ogilvy, A&S undergraduate member of Men’s Basketball team; moderated by David Weintraub, Professor of Astronomy and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Director of the Program in the Communication of Science and Technology, and Vanderbilt Faculty Senate representative to the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics
USA (2007) Dir: Rick Greenwald.
The Caltech Men’s Basketball team hasn’t won a conference game in 22 years, which adds up to more than 250 losses. But then its roster boasts more high school valedictorians than high school basketball starters. Nevertheless, these overachievers prove they have as much desire to win a game as they have to earn a Nobel Prize. The panel discussion will focus on how the Vanderbilt basketball teams strike their own balance between rigorous academic and athletic programs, and how student-athletes succeed on the court and in the classroom. English. 85 minutes. DVD. Funding provided in part by Vandy Fanatics.

My Stepbrother is a Frankenstein (Moi svodnyi brat Frankenstein)

Wednesday, September 16
Presented by: Irina Makoveeva, Mellon Assistant Professor of Russian, Germanic & Slavic Languages Department
Russia (2004) Dir: Valerii Todorovskii.
Fresh from the war in Chechnya, 20-year-old Pavel arrives in Moscow to be fitted for an artificial eye and to find his father, Iulik, a physicist who is now a popular science author. Iulik has a happy, middle-class family life and is unaware that an adulterous fling two decades earlier produced a son. The reactions of Iulik and his family and friends to Pavel’s arrival represent a microcosm of societal attitudes toward traumatized veterans – a contradictory mix of gratitude, aversion, admiration, and fear. In Russian with English subtitles. Not rated. 120 minutes. Funding provided in part by Germanic & Slavic Languages Department.

Thursday, September 17: See Southern Arts Federation films, below.

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun)

Wednesday, September 23
Presented by: Peggy Setje-Eilers, Assistant Professor of German, Germanic & Slavic Languages Department
West Germany (1979) Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Married for barely a day during World War II, the widowed Maria Braun is forced to survive on her own. She becomes strong and cruel, sad and indomitable, so loyal to her husband that she kills for him, and so pitiless to her lover of many years that she drives him to death. Fassbinder’s biggest international box-office success and the first part of his “postwar trilogy,” The Marriage of Maria Braun is a heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life as well as a pointed attack on a society determined to forget its past. In German with English subtitles. Rated R. 120 minutes. Funding provided in part by Germanic & Slavic Languages Department.

XXY

Wednesday, September 30
Presented by: Office of LGBTQI Life; facilitator: Monica Casper, former executive director, Intersex Society of North America; professor of Social & Behavioral Sciences and Women’s Studies, Arizona State University
Argentina, France, Spain (2008) Dir: Lucia Puenzo.
For just about everybody, adolescence means having to confront a number of choices and life decisions, but rarely are they as monumental as the one facing 15-year-old Alex who was born an intersex child. As Alex begins to explore her sexuality, her mother invites friends from Buenos Aires to come for a visit at their house on the gorgeous Uruguayan shore. Their 16-year-old son Álvaro comes along and Alex is immediately attracted to the young man, which adds yet another level of complexity to her personal search for identity. And forces both families to face their worst fears. In Spanish with English subtitles. Not rated. 86 minutes. Funding provided in part by the Office of LGBTQI Life at the K. C. Potter Center.

Ro.Go.Pa.G. (Laviamoci il cervello – Rogopag)

Wednesday, October 7
Presented by: Andrea Mirabile, Assistant Professor of Italian, Department of French and Italian
Italy, France (1963) Dirs: Jean-Luc Godard, Ugo Gregoretti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini.
This omnibus film, whose title is an abbreviation of the directors’ last names, consists of four shorts: Rossellini’s “Illibatezza” (“Chastity”) tells the story of a flight attendant who rebuffs the unwanted attention of an American passenger by returning his overtures with aggressive ones of her own, which she records on a video camera to send to her fiancé back home. Set in Paris after a nuclear holocaust, Godard’s “Il Nuovo mondo” (“New World”) examines the startling changes in behavior that occur in the survivors. In Pasolini’s “La Ricotta,” an impoverished bit player in “The Passion of Christ” struggles to feed himself and his family in the midst of an uncaring milieu. Gregoretti’s “Il Pollo ruspante” (“Free Range Chicken”) juxtaposes the odyssey of an Italian middle class family with the lecture of a marketing executive who teaches businessmen how to stimulate consumption. In Italian with English subtitles. Not Rated. 122 minutes. 16mm. Funding provided in part by the Department of French and Italian.

Monday, October 19: See Southern Arts Federation films, below.

 

Bloodlines

Tuesday, October 20
Presented by: Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture Series; facilitator: Sara Figal, Assistant Professor, Germanic & Slavic Languages Department
Australia (2008) Dir: Cynthia Connop.
Bettina Goering, grandniece of Hermann Goering, has long tried to bury the dark legacy of her family history. Ruth Rich, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, cannot resolve her deep-rooted anger over the suffering of her parents. Bettina seeks out Ruth in an attempt to confront her fear that the capacity for evil is in her blood. When the women meet, their hidden guilt and rage clash in a series of intimate and extraordinary meetings. This film provides relevant and timely insight into the difficult process of reconciliation and forgiveness, and the long-term consequences of hatred. 52 minutes. DVD. Funding provided in part by the Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture Series.

Join us for this MONSTER MASH in COSTUME!

Nosferatu (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens)

Saturday, October 31
An original musical score will be performed LIVE by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra
Presented by: Paul Young, Associate Professor, Director of Film Studies
Germany (1922) Dir: F. W. Murnau.
An unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu is the quintessential vampire film, crafted by legendary German director F. W. Murnau. Rather than depicting Dracula as a shape-shifting monster or debonair gentleman, Murnau’s Graf Orlok is a nightmarish, spidery creature of bulbous head and taloned claws, perhaps the most disturbing incarnation of vampirism ever. English intertitles. Silent. Not Rated. 94 minutes. Funding provided in part by the Film Studies Program.

Corridor #8

Wednesday, November 4
Presented by: Gregg Horowitz, Associate Professor, Philosophy Department
Bulgaria (2008) Dir: Boris Despodov.
Take one fragmentary road, three suspicious national neighbors, and one mischievous filmmaker and you have the ingredients for an absurdly funny and engaging look at the new “unified” Europe. In 1997, the EU commissioned Corridor #8, an ambitious rail and road system designed to join Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania but 10 years and millions of euros later, progress is scarcely visible – on the project and on relieving the deep suspicions that persist among these nations and their people. In Albanian, Bulgarian, English, and Macedonian with English subtitles. Not Rated. 74 minutes. Funding provided in part by the Philosophy Department.

Thursday, November 12: See Southern Arts Federation films, below.

Gate of Flesh (Nikutai no mon)

Presented as part of The New Age of the New Wave
Tuesday, November 17
Presented by: Todd Hughes, Director, Language Center
Japan (1964) Dir: Seijun Suzuki.
Set immediately after WWII, this film explores the desperate lengths a devastated community must go to in order to survive. A group of prostitutes live and work in the basement of a bombed-out building in Tokyo, governing themselves with a strict code of conduct. The women’s solidarity breaks down when they shelter a wounded man as each woman claims him for herself. Originally intended as a gritty erotic tale, Suzuki uses his wartime experiences to depict the depths to which post-war urban centers fell. In Japanese with English subtitles. 90 minutes. DVD. Funded in part by the Language Center. Held in conjunction with International Education Week.

Tokyo Drifter (Tôkyô nagaremono)

Thursday, November 19
Presented by: Todd Hughes, Director, Language Center
Japan (1966) Dir: Seijun Suzuki.
In this free-jazz gangster film, reformed killer “Phoenix” Tetsu drifts around Japan, awaiting his own execution, until he’s called back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang by his boss, who is trying to give up his life of crime. But both men have a hard time sticking to a virtuous path when associates are blackmailed, loves threatened, and deceit and treachery abound. The film’s aestheticized violence, visual gags, and mind-warping color effects got Suzuki in trouble with his studio heads, who had ordered him to “play it straight this time.” In Japanese with English subtitles. 90 minutes. DVD. Funded in part by the Language Center. Held in conjunction with International Education Week.

Silent Light (Stellet licht)

Thursday, December 3
Presented by: Helena Simonett, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Literature and History, Blair School of Music
Mexico, France, Netherlands, Germany (2007) Dir: Carlos Reygadas.
This deeply affecting drama, performed by a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, reveals the everyday raptures of an isolated Mennonite community in northern Mexico. Johan, a farmer with seven towheaded children and a devoted wife, Esther, has fallen in love with a neighbor, Marianne. Though tormented by the affair, Johan feels Marianne is his truer match, and he, with unintended cruelty, does not hide his struggle from Esther, whom he also loves. While Esther waits on the sidelines, tending the children, keeping the house, and driving the family tractor, Johan explores the limits of his faith and his faithfulness. This gorgeous film was included on numerous top ten lists for 2008. Plautdietsch and Spanish with English subtitles. Not Rated. 145 minutes.

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The International Lens film series is coordinated by the Office of Arts & Creative Engagement and the Office of International Student & Scholar Services in collaboration with Vanderbilt University academic departments, centers, and programs.

• Schedule is subject to change.
• Admission is FREE and open to the public.
• All films in Sarratt Cinema at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted
• All films in 35mm unless otherwise noted
• “Not rated” films may contain material suitable for mature audiences only.

Sarratt Cinema is located on the first floor of the Sarratt Student Center at Vanderbilt University. The Multipurpose Room is on the second floor of The Commons Center on Vanderbilt’s Peabody Campus, just north of the intersection of 18th Avenue South, and Horton Avenue.

Parking for Nashville community members for International Lens screenings is available at no charge in Zone 2 lot 2 on West End Avenue. Please avoid parking in spaces that are reserved. If the lot is full, metered parking spaces are also available on West End (note: there is no charge for parking at meters after 6pm). Parking for events at The Commons is available in Zone 1 lots 77, 79, or 81 on 18th Avenue South.

For parking maps and additional information visit www.vanderbilt.edu/internationallens or call 322-6400.

 

 

*The Tournées Festival was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture (CNC). Festival sponsors include: the Florence Gould Foundation, the Grand Marnier Foundation, highbrow entertainment, and the Franco-American Cultural Fund.