Film series at UVa

Hey everyone, this film series just got started up last Thursday. If you are interested in any of these films on Globalization you should definitely check them out.

Globalization and Education
An International Film Series for the
Curry/UVA Community

When: Thursdays 5-7pm

Where: (in the auditorium in Ruffner Hall) RFN G004C

We've compiled a documentary film series of cutting edge, social
justice films that we hope will inspire, educate and engage the entire
UVA community to discuss and think more broadly about global issues in
education. Most of the films have been selected from various
international film festivals and focus on globalization, and we've
identified those that look specifically at global influences on
education and other social sectors. Offering an alternative view to
understanding globalization in purely economic terms, the film series
and discussions will serve as an important forum for thinking about
and acting on global concerns, reminding us that a different
trajectory is not only possible but imperative. We hope you'll be able
to join us!

Each of the films runs approximately 1 to 1 1/2 hours and will be
followed by a facilitated discussion (sometimes with the film actors,
directors or faculty from the particular country or region ? see
details in the flier!). We will kick off the series this Thursday
night (1/31) with a film about education and the colonial system in
Cameroon. We are fortunate to have Caroline Berinyuy, a Social
Foundations doctoral student who is from Cameroon and has been
teaching there for the past 20 years to lead off the discussion.


Film topics and dates

Feb. 7 Life and Debt (Jamaica, Stephanie Black, 1 hour 26 min)
(***ROOM CHANGE ?RFN 175): Utilizing excerpts from the award-winning
non-fiction text "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid, Life & Debt is a
woven tapestry of sequences ... all » focusing on the stories of
individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of
day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign
economic agendas.

February 14: Testing Hope: Grade 12 in the New South Africa (South
Africa, Molly Blank, 1 hour) Chronicles the lives of four young people
in Nyanga township, just outside Cape Town, as they work towards their
crucial final high school exams, the Matric. While this is the new
South Africa, many vestiges of apartheid remain ? poverty is
entrenched, many students live in shacks, and families have been
dramatically changed by the impact of HIV-AIDS.

February 28: The Other Europe (58min) Immigration is as hot button an
issue across Europe as it is here. The film is a penetrating study of
the economics and politics behind the immigration debate with
revealing parallels to our own country.

Mar. 13: Granito de Arena (Grains of Sand) (Mexico, 2 hours) For
over 20 years, global economic forces have been dismantling public
education in Mexico, but always in the constant shadow of popular
resistance...Granito de Arena is the story of that resistance ? the
story of hundreds of thousands of public schoolteachers whose
grassroots, non-violent movement took Mexico by surprise. Discussion
with David Edwards, International Initiatives at the NEA.

March 27: Saudi Solutions (Saudi Arabia,77 min) Filmmaker Bregtje van
der Haak is the first Western filmmaker ever granted permission to
film the lives of Saudi women. She profiles several women with
professional careers--including a journalist, a doctor, a
photographer, a television newsreader, a university professor and the
nation's first female airplane pilot--and asks them to explain what it
means to be a modern woman in a fundamentalist Islamic society.

April 10: Sand and Sorrow (Sudan, Freedman, 93 minutes) Offered
exclusive and unparalleled access to the situation on the ground
inside Darfur, Peabody award-winning filmmaker, Paul Freedman ("Rwanda
- Do Scars Ever Fade?"), joins a contingent of African Union
peacekeeping forces in Darfur while a tragic and disturbing chapter in
human history unfolds. Discussion with the Filmmaker Paul Freedman and
human rights activist and author of many books on Darfur, John
Prendergast.

April 17: Secret Ballot (Iran, 100min) A film about democracy and
social change in Iran explored through the lives of a soldier and a
young woman who are tasked with collecting votes throughout the
country. Followed by a discussion with the film's leading actor,
Nassim Dezfooli, about the film, girls' education and the grass-roots
democracy movement in Iran.

April 24: Two films: New Rulers of the World (53 minutes) Journalist
John Pilger investigates the realities of globalization by taking a
close look at TNCs in Indonesia (companies such as GAP, Levis, Nike,
Rebock) and Afro@Digital (Congo/France/ Nigeria, 52 minutes) begins
with a provocative question: How can Africa escape the logic of
poverty and unequal development by making sure that digital technology
doesn't pass it by, become an agent of neo-colonialism or marginalize
it still further?