Fall 2017
INTERNATIONAL LENS, a film series with a global perspective, provides a forum to promote conversation among Vanderbilt’s diverse community of students, faculty, and staff. International Lens endeavors to transcend geographic, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and political boundaries by encouraging conversation and greater cross- cultural understanding through cinema. The series is a collaboration among Cinema & Media Arts, Dean of Students offices, and other departments, centers, and programs across the University.
There is no charge for admission.
Films are screened in Sarratt Cinema at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.
Fall 2017 Schedule of Films
Sleep Dealer
Thursday, September 14
Presented by Haerin Shin, Assistant Professor of English/ Cinema & Media Arts; and Marzia Milazzo, Assistant Professor of English/Latino and Latina Studies. Co- Sponsored by Latino and Latina Studies Program.
Mexico/USA (2008) Dir: Alex Rivera.
Set in a dystopian near-future where the US- Mexico border is walled off by a militarized government, with corporate bodies sourcing their labor from a virtual plug-in network of undocumented workers. Sleep Dealer follows the story of Memo Cruz as he struggles to reclaim his humanity in a system that subsists on technologically-induced alienation and disenfranchisement. Spanish with English subtitles. 90 min. DVD. Presented in collaboration with the Department of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and Latina/o Studies
Paradise Now
Thursday, September 21
Presented by Ken MacLeish, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society, & Anthropology.
Palestine/France (2005) Dir: Hany Abu- Assad.
Paradise Now is the story of two young Palestinian men, best friends and disaffected slackers who have been recruited to be suicide bombers. When their mission doesn’t go as planned, they begin to question what they’ve been asked to do in different ways. The film offers a verité- style depiction of life in the occupied West Bank and explores compelling questions of violence, morality, and justice. Arabic/English, 90 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.
An evening with award-winning filmmaker SASHA WATERS FREYER
Thursday, September 28
Presented by Jonathan Rattner, Assistant Professor Cinema & Media Arts and Art.
Sasha Waters Freyer is a moving image artist trained in photography and the documentary tradition who fuses original and found footage in 16mm film and digital media. Her past projects have screened at a variety of prestigious international film festivals and museums, including Rotterdam, Telluride, Tribeca, the Pacific Film Archives, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit. Sasha has also served as Chair of the Department of Photography & Film at Virginia Commonwealth University, the number one public arts school in the U.S. for the past five years.
Lumumba
Wednesday, October 4
Presented by Moses Ochonu, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of History.
France/Belgium/Germany/Haiti (2000) Dir: Raoul Peck.
Raoul Peck fictionalizes the life and brutal execution of Patrice Lumumba, the leader of the Congolese National Movement. The film charts Lumumba’s political career and radicalization in the fight for Congo’s independence and the Cold War-era international forces that undercut the country’s democracy. Critic Elvis Mitchell writes: “This is a movie about chaos and regret, focusing on the unleashing of forces greater than any one person could hope to handle and the carnage, however necessary, left in their wake.” French/Lingala/English. 120 min. DVD. Presented in collaboration with the Department of History, Cinema & Media Arts, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for Humanities.
I Am Not Your Negro
Monday, October 16
Presented by Jennifer Fay, Associate Professor of Cinema & Media Arts and English; and Hortense Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Prof of English.
Switzerland/France/Belgium/USA (2016) Dir: Raoul Peck.
Based on James Baldwin’s
unfinished book on the lives and assassination
of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther
King, Jr. Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary
uses archival footage and Baldwin’s own
words to bring these stories to the screen.
Peck unfolds the history of the Civil Rights
movement suggesting the deep connections
to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. I Am Not
Your Negro is also a meditation on Hollywood’s
role in America’s racist imagery. English/French.
93 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in Collaboration with the Department of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for Humanities.
RAOUL PECK – Visiting Filmmaker
Wednesday, October 18, 4:10 p.m. • Sarratt Cinema
Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck discusses his latest film I Am Not Your Negro, based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript “Remember This House” (see above). He received international attention for Lumumba, his 2000 fiction feature film about Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
Angels of the Revolution
Thursday, October 19
Presented by Polina Dimova, Lecturer in the Department of German, Russian, and East European Studies.
Russia (2014) Dir: Aleksey Fedorchenko.
This colorful film imaginatively explores the cultural basis of the Russian Revolution. When Stalin built a town in northern USSR on the land of indigenous shamans in the 1930s, he mistakenly generated a landmark collision of cultures now known as the Great Samoyedic War. Russian avant-gardists from the South, led by the legendary Communist fighter, “Polina the Revolutionary,” trek up to the banks of the Amnya River eager to reconcile a Soviet utopia with the ideals of Ancient Paganism of the native peoples. Russian/Khanty, English subtitles. 113 min. This event will be followed by panel discussion on Friday, October 20, to reflect upon the repercussions of the Russian Revolution from its immediate aftermath to contemporary Russia. Presented in collaboration with the Department of German, Russian and East European Studies, and the Cinema & Media Arts Program.
Voices Beyond the Wall: Twelve Love Poems from the Murder Capital of the World
Thursday, October 26
Presented by Paula Covington, Latin American Bibliographer, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies.
Honduras/USA (2017) Dir: Brad Coley.
Rescued from the streets of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, orphaned girls find their voices in poetry as they heal traumas of their past and prepare to transition into an uncertain future. Coley’s eloquent documentary leads us into the lives of teen-aged girls who live in Nuestra Pequeñas Rosas, a girls’ home in the crime-ridden city. The film highlights the young women’s poems and we learn of their thoughts about the future, each bearing emotional scars, but also a striking sense of how ready they are to try to understand and to forgive. Spanish with English subtitles. This film will also be introduced by the founder of the home, Dr. Diana Frade. Spanish with English subtitles. 89 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies.
Kalushi: The Story of Solomon Mahlangu
Thursday, November 2
Presented by Keith Weghorst, Assistant Professor of Political Science.
South Africa (2017) Dir: Mandla Dube.
Kalushi is the true story of a young street salesman from a small township outside of Pretoria in South Africa. After being brutally beaten by apartheid police, Kalushi joins the South African liberation movement. His fellow soldier and friend ends up shooting two innocent people on the streets of downtown Johannesburg. While his friend is severely beaten and tortured, Kalushi faces a daunting trial in which the State seeks death by hanging. With a crew and cast consisting solely of South African citizens – a rare occurrence in movies about apartheid – Kalushi is an examination of grief as well as a historical illustration of political persecution. English. 107 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Department of Political Science and the “Africa at a Crossroads” TIPS Project.
Inxeba (the Wound)
Thursday, November 9
Presented by Tara McKay, Assistant Professor – Center for Medicine, Health & Society, Department of Sociology, and the Department of Health Policy.
South Africa/Germany/Netherlands/France (2017) Dir: John Trengove.
Inxeba follows a young factory worker living in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. When he and other men from his community gather in the mountains to observe an initiation ritual transitioning a group of teenage boys to manhood, a defiant initiate from the city discovers his secret, a forbidden relationship with another man in the community, and his entire existence begins to unravel. Xhosa/Afrikaans/English. 88 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Center for Medicine, Health and Society, and the Africa TIPS Project.
Memories of Murder
(Sarin eui chueok)
Thursday, November 30
Presented by Haerin Shin, Assistant Professor of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and Asian Studies; and Se Young Kim, Mellon Assistant Professor of Cinema & Media Arts and Asian Studies.
South Korea (2003) Dir: Bong Joon-Ho.
Based on the true story of Korea’s first serial murders in history, which took place between 1986 and 1991 in Gyeonggi Province. Moving from atmospheric mystery to political allegory, with pit stops into slapstick comedy along the way, Bong Joon-ho’s second film, remains impossible to categorize. Newly restored and re-released, the director’s breakthrough feature has lost none of its power to unsettle, and today it feels even stranger than ever. This masterfully crafted thriller resonated with Korean audiences not only because it revisited a moment of national tragedy, but also because it considered it within the tumultuous recent history of South Korea and the traumatic effects of compressed modernity. Korean/English. 131 min. Post-screening discussion led by Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, Associate Professor of English, Pomona College. Presented in collaboration with the Department of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and Asian Studies.