State
College Peace Center Sponsored FILMS
FALL
2008
Except as noted, all events are
on Thursdays at 7:30 pm in
Room 201 State College Municipal Building, 243
South Allen Street
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Impressions
of Venezuela
a
talk by Phyllis and Richard Mansfield
October 23,
Thursday, 7:30 PM
State College Municipal Building,
room
201
243 South Allen Street, State College
The
Mansfields will offer impressions of their trip
to Venezuela last winter organized by Global
Exchange, a politically progressive travel group. |
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Thursday,
September 18
Katrina's Children (2008)
The film is a feature-length documentary about
nineteen children from different neighborhoods
of New Orleans. Told entirely from the children's
point of view, the film explores the impact of
Hurricane Katrina on their lives. We enter their
world through their stories, their play and their
art and we have animated several of their drawings,
magically bringing to life their interior universe.
Aching with sadness, yet grounded in hope, "Katrina's
Children" is ultimately a celebration of
children's extraordinary resilience and a tribute
to New Orleans' unique and indomitable spirit.
(83 minutes) |
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Thursday,
October 16
The Ship Breakers (2004)
Welcome to Alang, India, the site of a gargantuan
scrap yard where oceangoing ships come to die.
Forty thousand Indians live and work here, dismembering
and scavenging the hulks of 400 vessels every
year. The film chronicles the lives of the people
who live here, from the men who take apart these
giant ships with their bare hands to the bosses,
who ignore environmental and health concerns
for fear of losing the business to other developing
nations. One worker a day, on average, dies
on the job, evaporated in explosions, crushed
by falling steel, cut in half by cables or broken
up by falls. Of the remainder, one in four will
contract cancers caused by asbestos, PCBs and
other toxic substances. Vividly capturing both
the haunting beauty of the ships and the deplorable
conditions of the workers,Shipbreakers is an
international story of greed, survival, Third
World labor, and environmental neglect.
(42 minutes)
Ghosts
(2005)
This film is the first of five segments of a
documentary entitled "Workinman's Death".
The section "Ghosts" evokes the Herculean
labors of Alexsei Stakhanov, a legendary coal
miner in the Soviet Union in the mid-1930's
who was mythicized for his superhuman productivity
and is remembered at the beginning of the film.
Jumping to the present, "Ghosts" visits
Stakhanov's latter-day descendants extracting
what coal remains in the Donbass region of Ukraine,
where he toiled 70 years earlier. Squeezing
their bodies into narrow crevices known as mousetraps,
many no higher than 16 inches, the miners use
chisels and pickaxes to dig coal out of these
depleted mines. After separating coal from rock,
they haul their meager spoils out of the pit
by hand in small wagons, and divide it up. Most
use it to heat their homes. The little bit left
over is sold for food. Without the coal, one
declares, they would freeze to death. (31
minutes)
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Thursday,
November 13
Taxi To The Dark Side (2007)
The film focuses on the murder
in custody of an Afghan taxi driver, Dilawar,
who was beaten to death by American soldiers while
being held in extrajudicial detention at the Bagram
Air Base. "Taxi to the Dark Side" goes
on to examine America's policy on torture and
interrogation in general, specifically the CIA's
use of torture and their research into sensory
deprivation. There is a description of the opposition
to the use of torture from its political and military
opponents as well as the defense of such methods,
attempts by Congress to uphold the standards of
the Geneva Convention forbidding torture, and
the popularization of the use of torture techniques
in shows such as Fox TV's "24". The
film is said to be the first film to contain images
taken within Bagram Air Base. (106 minutes) |
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Thursday,
December 4
War Dance (2008)
Set in war-ravaged Northern Uganda, this film
is the real-life story about a group of children
whose love of music brings joy, excitement and
hope back into their poverty-stricken lives.
Three children who have suffered horrific brutalities
momentarily forget their struggles as they participate
in music, song and dance at their school. Invited
to compete in a prestigious music festival in
their nation's capital, their historic journey
is a stirring tale about the power of the human
spirit to triumph against tremendous odds (107
minutes) |
Vigils
for Peace: College
& Allen Streets,
Saturdays from 1:30-2:30 and Wednesdays 5:00-6:00
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