Community Cinema Fall 2013 Series at Soka University
Category: Community cinema
The Revoltionary Optimists
The Film
Amlan Ganguly empowers children to become activists and educators, with powerful results. The Revolutionary Optimists follows him as he attempts to replicate his work in the brick fields outside the city, where children live and work in unimaginable conditions.
Using street theater, puppetry, and dance as their weapons, the children in Calcutta’s slums have cut their neighborhoods’ malaria and diarrhea rates in half, and turned former garbage dumps into playing fields. Now, pushing at the limits of optimism, Amlan is attempting to take his work into the brickfields outside Calcutta, where spend their days making and carrying bricks using methods unchanged by centuries.
The Revolutionary Optimists proposes a workable solution to intractable problems associated with poverty, including preventable diseases and ineffectual governance. Ganguly’s story suggests that education and child empowerment are crucial keys to lifting entire societies out of hopelessness.
The Filmmakers
Nicole NewnhamProducer/Director
Maren Grainger-MonsenProducer/Director
Panelist:
Kathy Jurgensen
Maren Grainger-MonsenProducer/Director
Panelist:
Kathy Jurgensen
The Island President
Soka University Presents…
Community Cinema
Pauling 216
Community Cinema
The Island President
Thursday, April 18, 2013
7:00-8:30 PM
Pauling 216
FREE and open to the public!
The Filmmakers:
Jon ShenkDirector
Bonni CohenProducer
Richard BergeProducer
The Island President lifts the issue of global warming out of the theoretical and into the personal. President Mohamed Nasheed is trying to prevent 385,000 people from drowning. His nation of 1,200 low-lying islands, the Maldives, is sinking into the Indian Ocean as sea levels rise due to global warming. Climate change experts say that some of the islands will be submerged within 20 years, threatening the lives of the largely impoverished inhabitants as well as inundating the lavish resorts that dot the islands. Nasheed’s unprecedented contingency plan is to move his entire population to a new homeland. As he conducts serious discussions about this with Sri Lanka and Australia, Nasheed is doing all he can to prevent this looming disaster by trying to convince world leaders to halt global warming.
The Island President is a little like a non-fiction Mr. Smith Goes to Washington elevated to the world stage. The filmmakers received exclusive access to follow President Nasheed as he prepared over several months for the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit in December. The terms of the 1997 Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change were about to expire, and leaders from around the world converged on Copenhagen to hammer out a new treaty with renewed urgency. Go behind the scenes with President Nasheed as he tries to convince world leaders to finally take serious action against looming danger of climate change. The stakes couldn’t be higher for President Nasheed, who this as the last chance to save his homeland, and the world.
With Guest Panelists: Environmental Professor Monika Calef, Sociology Professor Ryan Caldwell, and representatives of the student-led Environmental Department
Wonder Woman: the Untold Story of American Superheroines
Soka University
Community Cinema
March 7th, 2013
7:00-8:30 PM
Guest Panelist: Dr. Ryan Caldwell
Kelcey EdwardsProducer
The Film:
Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today, Wonder Women! looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.
The Filmmakers:
Kelcey EdwardsProducer
The Powerbroker: Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights
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| Photo Credit: http://www.itvs.org |
Community Cinema
Soka University
Pauling 216
February 21st
7PM
The Film:
Whitney M. Young, Jr. was one of the most celebrated — and controversial — leaders of the civil rights era. The Powerbroker: Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights follows his journey from segregated Kentucky to head of the National Urban League. Unique among black leaders, he took the fight directly to the powerful white elite, gaining allies in business and government, including three presidents. Young had the difficult tasks of calming the fears of white allies, relieving the doubts of fellow civil rights leaders, and responding to attacks from the militant Black Power movement.
The Filmmakers:
Bonnie BoswellProducer
Christine KhalafianProducer/Director
Taylor HamiltonProducer/Director
Soul Food Junkies
COMMUNITY CINEMA AT SOKA UNIVERSITY PRESENTS
SOUL FOOD JUNKIES
a film by Byron Hurt
Date: 01.17.2013
Time: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Location: Pauling Hall 216
Soul food lies at the heart of African American cultural identity. The black community’s love affair with soul food is deep-rooted, complex, and in some cases, deadly. Soul Food Junkies puts this culinary tradition under the microscope to examine both its significance and its consequences.
Solar Mamas
COMMUNITY CINEMA AT SOKA UNIVERSITY PRESENTS
Solar Mamas
a film by Jehane Noujaim
Date: 11.08.2012
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: Pauling 216
This documentary follows Rafea — a 30-year-old Jordanian mother of four — who is traveling outside of her village for the first time to attend a solar engineering program at India’s Barefoot College. She will join other poor women from Guatemala, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Colombia in learning concrete skills to create change in their communities.
As Goes Janesville
COMMUNITY CINEMA AT SOKA UNIVERSITY PRESENTS
As Goes Janesville
a film by Brad Lichtenstein
Date: 10.25.2012
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: Pauling 216
America’s middle class is dwindling, and the debate over how to save it is nowhere fiercer than in the normally tranquil state of Wisconsin. In Janesville, as jobs disappear and families are stretched to their breaking point, citizens and politicians are embroiled in an ideological battle about how to turn things around.
Half the Sky: Cambodian Sex Trafficking
September 27th
7 PM
Soka University of America (Pauling 216)
This landmark transmedia project features a four-hour PBS primetime national and international broadcast event, a Facebook-hosted social action game, mobile games, two interactive websites, educational video modules with companion text, and an impact assessment plan all inspired by Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the widely acclaimed book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
For this screening we will show the section on Cambodian Sex Trafficking.
Panelists:
Dr. Shane Barter and Dr. Ryan Caldwell.
Community Cinema at Soka University – We Still Live Here – As Nutayunean
Community Cinema at Soka University – We Still Live Here – As Nutayunean
Date: 11.17.2011
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: Pauling 216
Admission: Free
The Wampanoag nation of southeastern Massachusetts ensured the survival of the first English settlers in America, and lived to regret it. We Still Live Here – Âs Nutayuneân tells the story of the return of the Wampanoag language, the first time a language with no native speakers has been revived in this country. Spurred on by an indomitable linguist named Jessie Little Doe, the Wampanoag are bringing their language and their culture back.
The Independent Television Service (ITVS), KOCE-TV (PBS) and Soka University of America are pleased to announce the third year of the Community Cinema series, which begins in September 2011. The largest public interest outreach program in public or commercial television, Community Cinema features a sneak peek of nine documentaries set to broadcast on the award-winning PBS series Independent Lens. Community Cinema, in partnership with the Humanities Program and Student Affairs, screens films monthly from September through May.
After the screenings, Community Cinema features panel discussions with leading community based organizations, special guest speakers, information, resources, and other programming designed to help our students and our community learn more about the issues and get involved. Faculty members are encouraged to incorporate these films in their class curricula.
For more information about the films and Community Cinema visit: http://www.itvs.org/engagement
Panelist: Professor James Spady, Soka University of America.
Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli 