FOREIGN FILM SERIES
2007-2008
Schedule and Description of movies
The movies that we will be presenting are foreign films shown in a foreign language with subtitles. Some of the movies deal with more than one culture. Some deal with important historical, demographical, and human events such as immigration, exile, spirituality, unemployment, intolerance, precarity, military violence, solitude, and tolerance around the world and humor. Finally, all movies were carefully chosen because they all are:
- Movies having had a wide success around the world
- Movies that will be of interest to most UAB students
- Movies that promote and enforce diversity awareness
- Movies that foster and promote tolerance
- Movies that foster and promote freedom of expression through art
- Movies that foster and promote compassion
- Movies that will enforce language and culture learning
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AUGUST 28—8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
Madeinusa (Peru, Claudia Llosa, Director) –Madeinusa is a girl aged 14 with a sweet Indian face who lives in an isolated village in the Cordillera Blanca Mountain range of Peru. This strange place is characterized by its religious fervor. From Good Friday at three o'clock in the afternoon (the time of day when Christ died on the cross) to Easter Sunday, the whole village can do whatever it feels like. During the two holy days sin does not exist: God is dead and can't see what is happening. Everything is accepted and allowed, without remorse. Year after year, Madeinusa and her sister Chale, and her father Don Cayo, the Mayor and local big shot, maintain this tradition without questioning it. However, everything changes with the arrival in the village of Salvador, a young geologist from Lima, who will unknowingly change the destiny of the girl. –In Spanish with English subtitles.
SEPTEMBER 18—8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
Russian Dolls (French, 2005, Cédric Klapish, Director) --Sequel to The Spanish Apartment. Xavier is now thirty. No longer a student, he is not yet a well-balanced, fullfiiled adult either. His career is unsatisfying : far from being the renowned novelist he aimed to be he must be content with little jobs such as reporter or ghost writer. His greatest "achievement" in "literature" is his collaboration to the script of a corny TV soap ! His sentimental life is not much better, rhythmed by one night stands and unfinished romances. It looks as if when he seduces a woman beautiful outside and inside such as Kassia or Wendy he can't keep them. Will he ever bring his life into focus? --In French with English subtitles.
OCTOBER 2 —8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
Curse of the Golden Flower (China, Yimou Zhang, Director) -- During China's Tang dynasty the emperor has taken the princess of a neighboring province as wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family itself. --In Mandarin with English subtitles.
OCTOBER 16 —8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
El Carro (The Car) (Colombia, 2003, 93 min. Luis Orjuela, Director) El Carro follows the travails of the Velez’s, a typical middle-class family from Bogotá, as they buy their first car in an attempt to move up the local social ladder. After the father accidentally gives away a winning lottery ticket for a new car to the neighbors, the Velez’s decide to save face and buy their neighbor’s old car — a 1950s cherry red Chevy convertible — spending their entire nest egg. First-time director Luis Orjuela manages to create a hilarious social farce which portrays such quintessential Colombian experiences as a daughter’s quinceañera (15th birthday party), Christmas, and the lottery craze with a rare balance of sympathy and humor.
NOVEMBER 20 —8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
The Lives of Others (Germany, 2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Director)--von Donnersmarck's movie debut focuses on the horrifying, sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in the former East Germany. In the early 1980s, the successful dramatist Georg Dreyman and his longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland, a popular actress, are big intellectual stars in the socialist state, although they secretly don't always think loyal to the party line. One day, the Minister of Culture becomes interested in Christa, so the secret service agent Wiesler is instructed to observe and sound out the couple, but their life fascinates him more and more... –In German with English subtitles.
JANUARY 29 —8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
Volver (Spain, 2006, Pedro Almodovar, Director) –Raimunda lives in Madrid with her daughter Paula and her husband Paco, who is always drunk. Her sister, Sole, is separated and works clandestinely as a hairstylist for women. The two sisters lost their parents in a fire in La Mancha, their birth village, years ago. Their aunt, Paula, still lives in the village and continues to speak about her sister Irene, mother of the two sisters, as if she were still alive. When the old aunt dies the situation changes and the past returns (volver) in a twist of mystery and suspense. In Spanish with English subtitles.
FEBRUARY 19 —8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
Faat-Kiné (Senegal, 2000, Ousmane Sembene, Director) –A forty-year-old woman refuses to give into the stigma of unwed motherhood and climbs the ladder of success in a male dominated field. A must-see of African cinema. –In French and wolof with English subtitles.
MARCH 4 —8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free admission
Summer in la Goulette (Tunisia, 1996, Férid Boughedir, Director)--Summer, 1967. La Goulette, the touristic beach of Tunisi, is the site where three nice seventeen-year-old girls live: Gigi, sicilian and catholic; Meriem, Tunisian and Arab; Tina, French and Jewish. They would like to have their first sexual experience during that summer, challenging their families. Their fathers, Youssef, Jojo and Giuseppe, are old friends and their friendship will be in crisis because of the girls, while Hadj, an old rich Arab, would like to marry Meriem. –In Arabic with English subtitles.
MARCH 25 —8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free Admission
Pizzicata (Italy, 1996, Edoardo Winspeare, Director) --1943, Italy's Salentino peninsula. Tony, an American fighter pilot, raised speaking Italian in New York, parachutes to safety and is hidden at the olive farm of Carmine, a man with three daughters. One is being courted by Pasquale, the son of the area's largest landowner. It is she, Cosima, whom Tony falls for. He gets to know her through the rhythms of the farm and a traditional way of life, expressed in spontaneous song and in pizzicatas (dances). As Carmine protects Tony and as Cosima begins to love him, Pasquale does not go gently. --In Italian with English subtitles.
APRIL 15 –8pm, Hulsey Recital Hall, Free Admission
The Eel (Japan, 1998, Shohei Imamura, Director) –Shohei Imamura’s The Eel which shared the Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes International Film Fesival in 1997, is the poignant story of redemption of a murderer named Takuro Yamashita (played by Koji Yakusho of Shall We Dance). After serving eight years in prison for killing his wife in a fit of rage, Yamashita is released on parole and begins to rebuild his life in a small village. Trained as a barber in prison, he opens his own barbershop, but keeps very much to himself. His only companion is a pet eel acquired at the prison. Yamashita’s lonely life takes a different turn when he saves Keiko (Misa Shimizu of Okoge) from committing suicide. –In Japanese with English subtitles.
Each synopsis comes from the Internet Movie Database IMDb (http://www.imdb.com)