Film series: Campus Collaborations

Five young people stand indoors behind a table displaying a robotic arm mounted on a wheeled base. Four women and one man wear traditional attire with headscarves and warm clothing. The background includes workshop items like an anvil, tires, and mechanic

Each semester, Cornell Cinema partners with departments, programs, and organizations to bring to campus a dynamic range of films that amplify urgent issues, highlight cutting-edge research, and engage diverse communities. These films reflect the varied perspectives and concerns of our Cornell community and create opportunities to expand our thinking through the collective experience of the cinema.

All events are free and open to the public. Additional events will be announced throughout the semester.

Our spring semester line-up is emblematic of Cornell Cinema’s commitment to fostering collaboration and advancing interdisciplinary teaching and learning across campus:

  • - Throughout the spring, the Institute for African Development will present three new documentaries that highlight stories of activist resistance across the African continent. 
  • - On Wednesday, April 29, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program will sponsor a special double feature screening of Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho's documentary Pictures of Ghosts (2023) and his new Oscar-nominated political thriller The Secret Agent (2025).

  • - On Thursday, February 19, the Willard Straight Hall Centennial Committee and Black Student Empowerment office will host a screening and discussions of Agents of Change (2016) with filmmaker Frank Dawson.

     

Other highlights of the spring semester include partnerships with the Institute for African Development, Cornell Hillel, Cornell Outdoor Education, the East Asia Program, the Society for the Humanities, Cornell Health, the Migrations Program, and the Department of Romance Studies.
 

Campus collaborations are also fueling a number of filmmakers visits at Cornell Cinema this spring:

  • - We will host A.D. White Professors-at-Large Louis Massiah and Keri Putnam as well as a screening and discussion of Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) with film composer Michael Abels as part of “Music Unbound: From Stage to Screen with Michael Abels” for the College of Arts & Sciences’ Arts Unplugged series. 
     
  • - We are also pleased that acclaimed filmmaker Kimi Takesue will join us for a mini-retrospective of her work in late February, sponsored by the Minority, Indigenous & Third World Studies Committee.
     
  • - Finally, we will welcome actor-filmmaker Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine as a Carol B. Epstein Visiting Artist in the Department of Performing and Media Arts on Wednesday, February 18. 
     

Additional visiting filmmaker events include a screening of Rule Breakers (2025) with filmmakers Roya Mahboob and Elaha Mahboob on February 11, sponsored by Cornell Law School’s Migration and Human Rights Program and other departments; a screening of ¿Are We There Yet? (2024) with local filmmaker Thomas Hoebbel on March 4, sponsored by the Migrations Program; and a screening of the new documentary Madrid Ext. (2025) with filmmaker Juan Cavestany on March 25 as part of Professors Cecelia Lawless and Patty Keller’s “Cinematic Cities” course.

Other film series this semester

3-D: Another Dimension
Campus Collaborations
Colombian Tropical Gothic
Doc Spots
Experimental Lens
Exploring Ethnographic Filmmaking
Fit for Duty
Four by Francis Ford Coppola
French Film Festival 2026: A Family Affair
Human Resources: Alienation, the Body, and Science Fiction
Midcentury Melodrama
New Visions, New Voices
Olympic Visions
Recovery in Community
Restorations & Rediscoveries
Scale on Screen
Science on Screen
Seeing and Looking Across Cultures: The Films of Kimi Takesue
Stories in Motion
Worth a Watch

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