International Film Festival

Monday, January 29th (5 p.m.): Dolores

2017, Dir. Peter Bratt, English and Spanish with English subtitles, 98 min. Introduction and post-screening discussion led by Dr. Matthew Eddy, Associate Professor of Sociology.

Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one's life to social change.

Wednesday, January 31st (5 p.m.): After Winter Comes Spring (Winter Adé)

1988, Dir. Helke Misselwitz, German with English subtitles, 115 min. Introduction and post-screening discussion led by Dr. Kelly Kathleen Ferguson, Assistant Professor of English.

Shortly before the collapse of the GDR (German Democratic Republic, i.e. East Germany), filmmaker Helke Misselwitz traveled by train from one end of the country to the other interviewing East German women of different ages and backgrounds. In this documentary masterpiece, women reveal their personal and professional frustrations, hopes and aspirations—and, in doing so, paint a portrait of a changing society. The landscape and architecture of East Germany, filmed in black and white on 35mm by Thomas Plenert, form the background to the personal narratives that Misselwitz presents.

Saturday, February 3rd (2 p.m.): The Unknown Girl (La fille inconnue)

2016, Dirs. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, French with English subtitles, 113 min. Introduction and post-screening discussion led by Dr. Julie McCown, Assistant Professor of English.

This new film from acclaimed directors the Dardenne brothers (Two Days, One Night) is a searing saga of guilt and redemption. One evening after work hours, Jenny (Adèle Haenel), a young doctor, allows the door buzzer at the small clinic where she works to go unanswered. It's only later that she learns that the person ringing was an unidentified African woman found dead shortly after by the side of a road. Consumed by the thought that she is to blame, Jenny embarks on an obsessive crusade to discover who the anonymous woman was and to see to it that she is not forgotten. Shot through with low-key suspense and the heart-stopping realism that has become the directors' trademark, The Unknown Girl is both a gripping mystery and a profoundly human moral tale.

Monday, February 5th (5 p.m.): The Drifter (Eine flexible Frau)

2010, Dir. Tatjana Turanskyj, German with English subtitles, 97 min. Introduction and post-screening discussion led by guest speaker, Dr. Hester Baer, Associate Professor of German Film Studies & Women's Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"The Drifter" deals with the question of the identity-donating meaning of work. Greta M., 40, a woman with a postmodern, fragile architect's biography, loses her job. She is later fired after trying to work in a call center. Like Don Quichotte, she fights against uncanny powers: her son, "the dangerous maternity", the job coach, the suffocating architecture of new Berlin (gated communities, social town borders) and not least against her own paranoia and fear of becoming a woman without order. Greta drinks and drifts between adaptation and contradiction through her life. On this tour de force between the call center, searching for work, the job center, her life coach, architecture offices, her son's school, and bars, the protagonist drifts through Berlin's outskirts and arrives at the "town of women". The meetings are snapshots of modern women's lives. Only the old Hölderlin expert Dorothea is able to donate consolation, and young Chinese show the future of work and architecture. The plot frees itself of generic convention to highlight experience.

This screening is co-sponsored by the SUU Grace A. Tanner Center for Human Values and the Women and Gender Studies Program.

Please join us for a Dinner and Dialogue (hosted by the SUU Grace A. Tanner Center for Human Values) featuring Hester Baer in the Starlight Room of the Student Center at 7:00. This dinner and dialogue will follow a screening of "The Drifter" at 5:00 in the Student Center Theater. This event is free and open to the public but space is limited so register early on the Tanner Center website.

Wednesday, February 7th (5 p.m.): I Don't Belong Anywhere - The Cinema of Chantal Akerman

2015, Dir. Marianne Lambert, French with English subtitles, 67 min. Introduction and post-screening discussion led by Dr. Todd Petersen, Professor of English.

I Don't Belong Anywhere - The Cinema of Chantal Akerman explores some of the Belgian filmmaker's 40 plus films, and from Brussels to Tel Aviv, from Paris to New York, it charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shared with Marianne Lambert her cinematic trajectory, one that never ceased to interrogate the meaning of her existence. And with her editor and long-time collaborator, Claire Atherton, she examines the origins of her film language, and aesthetic stance.

Saturday, February 10th (2 p.m.): Violeta Went to Heaven (Violeta se fue a los cielos)

2011, Dir. Andrés Wood, Spanish and French with English subtitles, 1h 10m. Introduction and post-screening discussion led by Dr. Lynn Vartan, Associate Professor of Music & SUU A.P.E.X. Director.

An unconventional biography of a deeply influential figure in world music and complex cultural icon of Chile's history, Violeta Went to Heaven stars Francisca Gavilán as Violeta Parra, treasurer and guardian of Chile's deepest musical traditions and a woman of intense contradictions and unique genius. A singer, songwriter, author, poet, painter, and ethnomusicologist, Parra rescued a forgotten traditional culture, traveling throughout Chile to research Chilean traditional music, collecting songs and lyrics for an unprecedented project of recovery and revival that sparked a Latin American folk music movement, the nueva canción.