Our run of the Oscar-nominated short films continues! Thank you to those who have rented the programs thus far. If you haven’t yet watched the Animation, Live Action and/or Documentary programs, you still have time to do so! They are $12 each, or $30 for all three.
Speaking of the Oscars, we’ll be adding a special 2-night screening of Minari (May 1 & 2), which is nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture! We’ll provide more details and start taking reservations next Friday, April 16 for this special event, made possible with support from the Society for Asian American Graduate Affairs and the Asian American Studies Program.
In the meantime, we open three new films this week! First is Synonyms, a film that features everyone’s current pandemic fever-dream of living somewhere else and starting over. For Yoav, the Israeli at the center of the film, that somewhere else is Paris, where he intends to shed his Israeli identity. We’ve got a wonderful introduction to the film by Laurent Dubreuil (Comp Lit, Romance Studies, & Cognitive Science, and Director of French Studies at Cornell) on the film’s webpage.
We also open Wild Relatives, a documentary about an event that sparked worldwide interest: in 2012, an international agricultural research center was forced to relocate from Aleppo to Lebanon due to the Syrian civil war, beginning a laborious process of planting their seed collection from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault back-ups. The film is sold-out, but you can still partake of the panel discussion about the film on Tuesday, April 13 at noon. You can register for the discussion here.
Kalira Atita (Yesterday’s Past), recently added to our line-up, follows Gunu, a disillusioned young man from Satavaya village, part of a cluster of seven villages on India’s east coast that have been engulfed by the sea as a result of climate change and rising sea levels, as a cyclone heads toward the area. Initially, this event was open to those with a CU NetID only, but we’ve been able to open it up to the general public, so please take advantage of this special opportunity to see a film that was selected by the 51st International Film Festival of India for its prestigious Panorama section. The South Asia Program will host a Zoom webinar Q&A on Friday, April 16 at 10:30am ET with director Nila Madhab Panda that will be moderated by Professor Neema Kudva (CRP). You can register for that discussion here.
Finally, we open reservations for two new films: Med Hondo’s explosive attack on Western capitalism and its legacy of colonialism, Soleil Ô; and Fandango at the Wall (pictured), a new documentary that follows masterful son jarocho musicians from Veracruz, Mexico to the UnitedStates-Mexico border where they join a music & dance festival, Fandango Fronterizo, taking place on both sides of the border. To reserve a ticket to watch Fandango at the Wall, please visit this Eventbrite link. By registering to watch, you will also be registered and notified about the related panel discussion, taking place on Tuesday, April 27 at 1pm. Hosted by the Latin American Studies Program, the discussion will feature panelists Jorge Francisco Castillo (Founder, Fandango Fronterizo), Arturo O'Farrill (Founder, Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra), Kabir Sehgal (Producer), and Cornell alumna Varda Bar-Kar ’82 (Director). The panel will be moderated by Professor Alejandro Madrid (Music).
