The US State Department and
Department of Education have
designated November 14-18 "International Education Week
2005." International Education Week is an annual initiative
to celebrate and promote international education and exchange. As part
of this year's festivities at Harvard, the Davis Center is sponsoring a
film series (details below). For a full program
of Harvard events, please see the Office of International Programs
calendar at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~oip/calendar.html.
Worlds Colliding: Soviet and the Other
Three films--one each on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central
Asia--exploring the effects an encounter with a starkly different
culture can have on an individual.
Tuesday, November 15
"Good Bye, Lenin!" (2003, dir. Wolfgang Becker) 121 min.
East Germany, the year 1989: A young man
protests against the regime. His mother watches the police arresting
him and suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Some months
later, the GDR does not exist anymore and the mother awakes. Since she
has to avoid every excitement, the son tries to set up the GDR again
for her in their flat. But the world has changed a lot...
CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Concourse Level, Room S050
8:00 pm
Wednesday, November 16
"Genghis Blues" (1999, dir. Roko Belic) 88 min.
The extraordinary odyssey of a U.S.
musician of Cape Verdean ancestry to Tannu Tuva, in central Asia,
where nomadic people throat sing more than one note simultaneously,
using vocal harmonics. A bluesman, Paul Pena, blind and recently
widowed, taught himself throat singing and was by chance invited to
the 1995 throat-singing symposium in Kyzyl. Helped by the
"Friends of Tuva," Pena makes the arduous journey. Singing
in the deep, rumbling kargyraa style, Pena gives inspired performances
at the festival, composes songs in Tuvan, washes his face in sacred
rivers, expresses the disorientation of blindness in foreign
surroundings, and makes a human connection with everyone he
meets.
CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Concourse Level, Room S050
8:00 pm
Thursday, November 17
"Window to Paris" (Okno v Parizh) (1994, 87 minutes)
Nikolai (played by Sergei Dontsov) has been
fired from his job as a music teacher and has to live in the gym until
he finds a place to stay. Finally, he gets a communal room in the
apartment of Gorokhov (Victor Mikhalkov). The room's previous
inhabitant, an old lady, has died a year ago, and yet her cat, Maxi,
is still in the locked room, healthy and fat. Soon, Nikolai and his
neighbours discover the mystery: there is a window to Paris in the
room. That's when the comedy begins - will the Russians be able to
cope with the temptation to profit from the discovery?
CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Concourse Level, Room S050
8:00 pm
--
--------------------------------------------------
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 301B
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617.495.4037
Fax: 617.495.8319
http://www.daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu