Category: Documentary Film & Photography
Presentacion del Documental Politico en Argentina, Chile, y Uruguay: De Los Anos Cincuenta a la Decada Dos Mil

Señalan Traverso y Crowder-Taraborrelli : “El cine documental en Argentina, Chile y Uruguay ha demostrado fuerza, sofisticación y deseos de ser tanto testigo de los eventos políticos como protagonista de los procesos sociales que han marcado a estos tres países desde la década de los cincuenta”. Agregan que al existir hoy un corpus de trabajo y un archivo audiovisual histórico sustancial, este se constituye en una fuente de gran potencial para investigar y teorizar “tanto las historias y experiencias de cambio social y cultural en América Latina como el mismo género documental”.
En ellos examinan en detalle las estrategias utilizadas por documentalistas argentinos, chilenos y uruguayos, tanto para registrar e intervenir en eventos políticos específicos enmarcados dentro de procesos de cambio social más amplios, como para visualizar y reflexionar sobre el pasado y el futuro de estas tres naciones. Así, por ejemplo, en el caso argentino la mirada va desde el documental militante argentino de los sesenta hasta la más reciente producción, ejemplificada en Los rubios de Albertina Carri. De Chile son analizadas obras de Patricio Guzmán, una de las voces más potentes del cine documental a nivel internacional, Silvio Caiozzi y Carmen Luz Parot.
El libro cuenta con una introducción de Carlos Flores del Pino, director del Festival Internacional de Documentales de Santiago, quien señala: « Las turbulencias en las que se desplazan las notables reflexiones de este libro me han hecho recordar una lúcida afirmación de Godard: “el cine no es un arte, ni una industria, el cine es un misterio”. Por eso, creo yo, el cine difícilmente puede cambiar el mundo. El cine sólo puede cambiar el cine».
University of California, Berkeley
THE IMAGE KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE
The Cinema of the Prague Spring: The Aesthetics of Revolution
Emily Elizabeth Thomas, Visual and Critical Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA
Overview: This paper explores the effects of systematic, oppressive politics on the creative production of socially active works of cinema.
Student Militancy and Documentary Film in Argentina
Tomas Crowder-Taraborrelli, Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, USA
I will analyze a series of documentary films from Argentina that reclaim the history of the forced disappearances of high school students during the last dictatorship.
Images of the Future: Critical Reflections on “Things to Come” 1936 and “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Prof. H. James Birx, Division of Anthropology, Canisius College/University of Belgrade, Williamsville, USA
Overview: Cinematic images may anticipate the human future. Exemplary films are “Things to Come” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Emphasizing collectivism and individualism respectively, they offer contrasting visions of progressive evolution.
Limited Partnership
COMMUNITY CINEMA AT SOKA UNIVERSITY PRESENTS
Limited Partnership
Date: 05.07.2015
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: Pauling 216
Kirk Marcolina, Producer
Karen Hori, Co-Producer

Decades before The Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, one gay couple fell in love and took on the US government to fight for marriage and immigration equality. Filipino American Richard Adams and Australian Tony Sullivan met in 1971 in Los Angeles and quickly fell in love. In April 1975, thanks to a courageous county clerk in Boulder, CO, they became one of the first same-sex couples in the world to be legally married. Richard immediately filed for a green card for Tony based on their marriage. But unlike most heterosexual married couples who easily file petitions and obtain green cards, Richard received a denial letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service stating, ”You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.”
To prevent Tony’s impending deportation, and outraged by the tone, tenor, and politics of this letter, the couple sued the U.S. government. This became the first federal lawsuit seeking equal treatment for a same-sex marriage in U.S. history. Over four decades of legal challenges, Richard and Tony figured out how to maintain their sense of humor, justice, and whenever possible, their privacy. This tenacious story of love, marriage, and immigration equality is as precedent-setting as it is little-known – until now.
The Homestretch
COMMUNITY CINEMA AT SOKA UNIVERSITY PRESENTS
Date: 03.12.2015
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: Pauling 216
Directors/Producers:
Anne de Mare, Director/Producer
Kirsten Kelly, Director/Producer

The Homestretch follows three homeless teens as they fight to stay in school, graduate, and build a future. Each of these smart, ambitious youths — Roque, Kasey, and Anthony — will surprise, inspire, and challenge audiences to rethink stereotypes of homelessness as they work to complete their education while facing the trauma of being alone and abandoned at an early age. While told through a personal perspective, their stories connect with larger issues of poverty, race, juvenile justice, immigration, foster care, and LGBTQ rights.
With unprecedented access into Chicago public schools, The Night Ministry “Crib” emergency youth shelter, and Teen Living Programs’ Belfort House, The Homestretch follows these kids as they move through the milestones of high school while navigating a landscape of couch hopping, emergency shelters, transitional homes, street families, and a school system on the front lines of the homelessness crisis. The Homestretch examines the struggles these youth face in obtaining a high school level education, and then follows them beyond graduation to focus on the crucial transition when the structure of school vanishes, and homeless youth often struggle to find the support and community they need to survive and be independent. A powerful, original perspective on what it means to be young and homeless in America today, while building a future.
American Denial
COMMUNITY CINEMA AT SOKA UNIVERSITY PRESENTS
Date: 02.19.2015
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: Pauling 216
Directors/Producers:
Christine Herbes-Sommers, Producer
Llewellyn Smith, Producer/Director
Kelly Thomson, Producer
Follow the story of foreign researcher and Nobel Laureate Gunnar Myrdal whose study, An American Dilemma (1944), provided a provocative inquiry into the dissonance between stated beliefs as a society and what is perpetuated and allowed in the name of those beliefs. His inquiry into the United States’ racial psyche becomes a lens for modern inquiry into how denial, cognitive dissonance, and unrecognized, unconscious attitudes continue to dominate racial dynamics in American life. The film’s unusual narrative sheds a unique light on the unconscious political and moral world of modern Americans. Archival footage, newsreels, nightly news reports, and rare southern home movies from the ’30s and ’40s thread through the story, as well as psychological testing into racial attitudes from research footage, websites, and YouTube films.
Makers: Women in Comedy
Evolution of a Criminal
Soka University of America presents…
A Community Cinema Event
October 23rd 7-8:30 PM
Pauling 216
FREE & open to the public
Evolution of a Criminal