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Fall 2017

INTERNATIONAL LENS, a film series with a global perspective, provides a forum to promote conversation among Vanderbilt’s diverse community of students, faculty, and staff. International Lens endeavors to transcend geographic, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and political boundaries by encouraging conversation and greater cross- cultural understanding through cinema. The series is a collaboration among Cinema & Media Arts, Dean of Students offices, and other departments, centers, and programs across the University.

There is no charge for admission.

Films are screened in Sarratt Cinema at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

Fall 2017 Schedule of Films

Sleep Dealer ��

Thursday, September 14

Presented by Haerin Shin, Assistant Professor of English/ Cinema & Media Arts; and Marzia Milazzo, Assistant Professor of English/Latino and Latina Studies. Co- Sponsored by Latino and Latina Studies Program.

Mexico/USA (2008) Dir: Alex Rivera.

Set 
in a dystopian near-future where the US-
Mexico border is walled off by a militarized
 government, with corporate bodies sourcing
 their labor from a virtual plug-in network of
 undocumented workers. Sleep Dealer follows
 the story of Memo Cruz as he struggles to
 reclaim his humanity in a system that subsists 
on technologically-induced alienation and
 disenfranchisement. Spanish with English subtitles. 90 min. DVD. Presented in collaboration with the Department of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and Latina/o Studies

Paradise Now

Thursday, September 21

Presented by Ken MacLeish, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society, & Anthropology.

Palestine/France (2005) Dir: Hany Abu-
Assad.

Paradise Now is the story of two 
young Palestinian men, best friends and
disaffected slackers who have been 
recruited to be suicide bombers. When their
 mission doesn’t go as planned, they begin 
to question what they’ve been asked to do 
in different ways. The film offers a verité-
style depiction of life in the occupied West
Bank and explores compelling questions of
 violence, morality, and justice. Arabic/English, 90 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.

An evening with award-winning filmmaker SASHA WATERS FREYER

Thursday, September 28

Presented by Jonathan Rattner, Assistant Professor Cinema & Media Arts and Art.

Sasha Waters Freyer is a moving image artist 
trained in photography and the documentary 
tradition who fuses original and found footage in
16mm film and digital media. Her past projects 
have screened at a variety of prestigious
 international film festivals and museums, including 
Rotterdam, Telluride, Tribeca, the Pacific Film
 Archives, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit. Sasha has also served as Chair of the Department of Photography & Film at Virginia Commonwealth University, the number one public arts school in the U.S. for the past five years.

Lumumba

Wednesday, October 4

Presented by Moses Ochonu, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of History.

France/Belgium/Germany/Haiti (2000) Dir:
 Raoul Peck.

Raoul Peck fictionalizes the life
 and brutal execution of Patrice Lumumba, the
leader of the Congolese National Movement. 
The film charts Lumumba’s political career
 and radicalization in the fight for Congo’s 
independence and the Cold War-era 
international forces that undercut the country’s 
democracy. Critic Elvis Mitchell writes: “This is 
a movie about chaos and regret, focusing on 
the unleashing of forces greater than any one
 person could hope to handle and the carnage, 
however necessary, left in their wake.” ��French/Lingala/English. 120 min. DVD. Presented in collaboration with the Department of History, Cinema & Media Arts, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for Humanities.

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I Am Not Your Negro

Monday, October 16

Presented by Jennifer Fay, Associate Professor of Cinema & Media Arts and English; and Hortense Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Prof of English.

Switzerland/France/Belgium/USA (2016) 
Dir: Raoul Peck.

Based on James Baldwin’s 
unfinished book on the lives and assassination 
of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther 
King, Jr. Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary 
uses archival footage and Baldwin’s own
 words to bring these stories to the screen.
 Peck unfolds the history of the Civil Rights
 movement suggesting the deep connections 
to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.��I Am Not 
Your Negro is also a meditation on Hollywood’s
 role in America’s racist imagery. English/French.
93 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in Collaboration with the Department of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for Humanities.

RAOUL PECK
 – Visiting Filmmaker


Wednesday, October 18,��
4:10 p.m. • Sarratt Cinema

Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck discusses
 his latest film I Am Not Your Negro, based 
on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript “Remember This House” (see above). He received international attention for Lumumba, his 2000 fiction feature film about Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

Angels of the Revolution

Thursday, October 19

Presented by Polina Dimova, Lecturer in the Department of German, Russian, and East European Studies.

Russia (2014) Dir: Aleksey Fedorchenko.

This colorful film imaginatively explores the
 cultural basis of the Russian Revolution. When
 Stalin built a town in northern USSR on the 
land of indigenous shamans in the 1930s, he 
mistakenly generated a landmark collision of
 cultures now known as the Great Samoyedic
 War. Russian avant-gardists from the South,
 led by the legendary Communist fighter, “Polina 
the Revolutionary,” trek up to the banks of the
 Amnya River eager to reconcile a Soviet utopia
with the ideals of Ancient Paganism of the native peoples. Russian/Khanty, English subtitles. 113 min. This event will be followed by panel discussion on Friday, October 20, to reflect upon the repercussions of 
the Russian Revolution from its immediate aftermath to contemporary Russia. Presented in collaboration with the Department of German, Russian and East European Studies, and the Cinema & Media Arts Program.

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Voices Beyond the Wall: Twelve Love Poems from the Murder Capital of the World

Thursday, October 26

Presented by Paula Covington, Latin American Bibliographer, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies.

Honduras/USA (2017) Dir: Brad Coley.

Rescued from the streets of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, orphaned girls find their voices in poetry as 
they heal traumas of their past and prepare��to transition into an uncertain future. Coley’s 
eloquent documentary leads us into the lives of
 teen-aged girls who live in Nuestra Pequeñas
 Rosas, a girls’ home in the crime-ridden city.
 The film highlights the young women’s poems
 and we learn of their thoughts about the future, each bearing emotional scars, but also a striking sense of how ready they are to try to understand and to forgive. Spanish with English subtitles.��This film will also be introduced by the founder of the home, Dr. Diana Frade. Spanish with English subtitles. 89 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies.��

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Kalushi: The Story of Solomon Mahlangu

Thursday, November 2

Presented by Keith Weghorst, Assistant Professor of Political Science.

South Africa (2017) Dir: Mandla 
Dube.

Kalushi is the true story of 
a young street salesman from a 
small township outside of Pretoria
in South Africa. After being brutally 
beaten by apartheid police, Kalushi 
joins the South African liberation movement. His fellow soldier and friend ends up shooting two innocent people on the streets of downtown Johannesburg. While his friend is severely beaten and tortured, Kalushi faces a daunting trial in which the State seeks death by hanging. With��a crew and cast consisting solely of South African citizens – a rare occurrence in movies about apartheid – Kalushi is an examination of grief as well as a historical illustration of political persecution. English. 107 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Department of Political Science and the “Africa at a Crossroads” TIPS Project.

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Inxeba (the Wound)

Thursday, November 9

Presented by Tara McKay, Assistant Professor – Center for Medicine, Health & Society, Department of Sociology, and the Department of Health Policy.

South Africa/Germany/Netherlands/France��(2017) Dir: John Trengove.

Inxeba follows
 a young factory worker living in the Eastern 
Cape of South Africa. When he and other men 
from his community gather in the mountains to
 observe an initiation ritual transitioning a group
 of teenage boys to manhood, a defiant initiate 
from the city discovers his secret, a forbidden relationship with another man in the community, and his entire existence begins to unravel. Xhosa/Afrikaans/English. 88 min. Blu-Ray. Presented in collaboration with the Center for Medicine, Health and Society, and the Africa TIPS Project.

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Memories of Murder
 (Sarin eui chueok)


Thursday, November 30

Presented by Haerin Shin, Assistant Professor of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and Asian Studies; and Se Young Kim, Mellon Assistant Professor of Cinema & Media Arts and Asian Studies.

South Korea (2003) Dir: Bong Joon-Ho.

Based on the true story of Korea’s first serial 
murders in history, which took place between
 1986 and 1991 in Gyeonggi Province. Moving 
from atmospheric mystery to political allegory,
 with pit stops into slapstick comedy along the
 way, Bong Joon-ho’s second film, remains 
impossible to categorize. Newly restored and re-released, the director’s breakthrough feature has lost none of its power to unsettle, and today it feels even stranger than ever. This masterfully crafted thriller resonated with Korean audiences not only because it revisited a moment of 
national tragedy, but also because it considered it within the tumultuous recent history of South Korea and the traumatic effects of compressed modernity. Korean/English. 131 min. ��Post-screening discussion led by Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, Associate Professor of English, Pomona College. Presented in collaboration with the Department of English, Cinema & Media Arts, and Asian Studies.