International Film Festival: Exile & Migration @ the Gish - PDF document

International Film Festival: Exile & Migration @ the Gish Theater Spring 2018 Co-Organizers : Vibha Bhalla (Ethnic Studies), Beatrice Guenther (WRLD-French/ International Studies) & Christina Guenther (WRLD-German) Sponsors : The National Endowment of the Humanities; The Pallister Francophone Canadian Lecture Series; Department of WRLD; Ethnic Studies in the School of Culture and Critical Studies; Asian Studies & International Studies, the Department of Theatre and Film, the College of Arts and Sciences. Date — Thursdays/ Fridays Film Title/ Language Introductory Remarks March 22 (Thurs.) 7:30pm Persona Non Grata (2015) NEH supported Feature Film Film Director: Cellin Gluck Cellin Gluck Japan March 23(Fri.) 7:30pm Earth (1999) NEH supported Deepa Meetha Dr. Vibha Bhalla Feature Film Ethnic Studies/ School of Canada/ India Culture and Critical Studies March 29 (Thurs.) 7 :30pm Montréal la Blanche Pallister Francophone [Montreal, White City] Canadian Lecture Series (2016) Filmmaker Bachir Feature Film Bensaddek Bachir Bensaddek French-Canada Goin’ to Chicago (1994) April 5 (Thurs.) 7:30pm Dr. Nicole Jackson Documentary Dept. of History George King U.S.A. April 12 (Thurs.) 7:30pm Balseros (2002) Dr. Pedro Porben Documentary Dept. of WRLD- Latin Carles Bosch & Josep American Studies Maria Domenech Spain

Date — Thursdays/ Fridays Film Title/ Language Introductory Remarks April 13 (Fri.) 8:15pm Ali: Angst essen Seele auf Dr. Christina Guenther [Ali: Fear Eats the Soul] Dept. of WRLD--German (1974) Feature Film Rainer Werner Fassbinder (West) Germany April 19 (Thurs.) 7:30pm Dear Pyongyang (2005) Dr. Ryoko Okamura Documentary Dept. of WRLD--Japanese Yang Yong-Hi Japan/ South Korea April 20 (Fri.) 7:30pm La pirogue [The Dugout] NEH supported (2012) Feature Film Introduction by Dr. Beatrice Moussa Touré Guenther Senegal International Studies Dept. of WRLD-French Persona Non Grata (2015) Moving biopic about Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, sometimes called a “Japanese Schindler,” who issued several thousand visas to Jewish refugees in Lithuania before 1941. The film made its U.S. debut at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival in 2016. Earth (1999) This award-winning period drama is set in Lahore (Pakistan) during the 1947 partition separating India and Pakistan. One of the few films to explore the haunting ramifications of Partition, it focuses on the point of view of a young girl torn between allegiances. Montréal la Blanche [Montreal, White City] (2016) The story about a former Algerian pop-star who has fled to Canada to escape the Algerian Civil War (late 1990s) and who finds herself in a taxi cab one Christmas Eve in Montreal with an Algerian cab driver and is forced to confront personal questions of assimilation and identity. Goin’ to Chicago (1994) This documentary chronicles the Great Migration from 1915- 1960 by focusing on the personal struggles, including unemployment, sharecropping, and racism, of a group of African-Americans returning home to Greenville, MS by bus from Chicago. Balseros [Rafters] (2002) Filmed in Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, and the US, this transnational film gives insight into the “ human adventure of people who are shipwrecked between two worlds.” This award-winning documentary tracks the lives of Cubans who fled Cuba by raft during the economic depression of so-called Periodo especial in the early 1990s.

Ali: Angst essen Seele auf [Ali: Fear Eats the Soul] (1974) One of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s masterpieces, this award -winning drama explores the unusual love affair between a young Moroccan guest worker and an elderly German cleaning lady in West Germany of the mid 1970s. Dear Pyongyang (2005) Filmed in both Osaka, Japan and Pyongyang, North Korea in 2004, this deeply moving and intimate documentary features Zainichi (North) Korean immigrants living in Japan and their complex allegiances to family, host country, and their “fatherland . ” A daughter interviews her parents as they return to Pyongyang to celebrate her father’s 70 th birthday with her brothers. La pirogue (2012) A group of African men leave Senegal in a pirogue captained by a local fisherman to undertake the treacherous crossing of the Atlantic to Spain where they believe better lives and prospects are waiting for them.