Views
of a Changing World
Thursday,
March 2 ~ Saturday, March 4
Documentary
is the creative treatment of actuality – John Grierson
Documentary
defines not subject nor style but approach. Documentary differs
from story film not in its disregard for craftsmanship, but
in the purpose to which that craftsmanship is put.
– Paul Rotha
 The
nature of documentary films has changed in the past twenty years
from the cinema verite’ tradition to a genre that has recently
become successful in theatrical release. Modern lightweight
digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly
aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment
prices. The genre, though, still concerns itself with representing
the observable world. The documentarian draws on the world of
social and historical experience to construct an account of
lives and events.
Film
@ International House presents a selection of contemporary documentaries,
which demonstrates many of the technological changes in the
making of today’s films. Moreover, they retain the crucial definitions
which John Grierson and Paul Rotha have noted: they all consist
of the well-crafted, raw material of reality.
Thursday,
March 2 at 7:00pm
Antonio
Negri: A Revolt That Never Ends
dir.
Alexandra Weltz and Andreas Pichler, Germany, 2004, DVD, 52
mins, color and b/w, English, Italian and French w/ English
subtitles
Introduced
by Professor Jonathan Steinberg
 July
1st, 1997. An elderly man arrives in Italy on a flight from
Paris. The special forces of the Carabinieri immediately arrest
him. Antonio Negri had returned voluntarily to his home country
after 15 years of exile. Antonio Negri: A Revolt That Never
Ends, profiles the controversial life and times of this
university professor, philosopher, militant, prisoner, refugee,
and so-called 'enemy of the state,' tracing Negri's roots in
the history of radical left-wing movements in Italy during the
60s and 70s.
Jonathan
Stenberg is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Modern European
History Department Chair at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Steinberg came to Penn after more than thirty years at Cambridge
University. He has written on 20th century Germany, Italy, Austria
and Switzerland and has also prepared the official report on
the Deutsche Bank's gold transactions in the Second World War.
His teaching covers modern Europe since 1789 with specialization
in the German and Austrian Empires, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy
and modern Jewish history. He has also taught graduate seminars
in historical thought and method.
Academy
Award®
Nominee for Best Documentary
Friday,
March 3 at 7:00pm
Darwin's
Nightmare
dir. Hubert Sauper France/Austria/Belgium, 2004, BetaSP,
107 mins, color, English, Russian and Swahili w/English subtitles
Introduced
by Dr Arancha Garcia del Soto
 Feeling
more like sci-fi/horror than documentary, Darwin’s Nightmare
is the stranger-than-fiction tale of two relentless killing
machines: the Nile Perch which, over the course of a few decades,
ate through everything that used to live in Tanzania's Lake
Victoria and the foreign capitalists who introduced that non-native
fish in order to sell it to European consumers. Losing out
to
both of these were the local Tanzanians who once lived off the
lake's bounty, and now, literally, are left with bones and rotting
carcasses. When things take an even stranger turn, thanks to
an astounding third-act revelation, the relentlessness becomes
a cautionary tale it may not be too late to heed.
Dr. Arancha Garcia
del Soto is the Director of Refugee Initiatives at the Solomon
Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the
University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at various Spanish
universities on social structure, methods for social analysis,
and development and human rights, and has published and lectured
in Europe, Sri Lanka, West Africa, and the United States on
psychosocial interventions with survivors of violence. Dr. Garcia
del Soto has collaborated with local and international NGOs
for over a decade, formulating programs for different funding
agencies and implementing psychosocial and community programs
with survivors of violence in the Balkans, Magreb, West Africa,
Latin America and Sri Lanka.
Saturday,
March 4 - Parts 1 + 2 at 2:00pm and Parts 3 + 4 at 4:30pm
The
Century of The Self
dir.
Adam Curtis, England, 2002, DVD, 240 mins, color and b/w
 By
introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Sigmund
Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires
of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor
to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls,
and society's belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness
is man's ultimate goal. The Century of the Self tells
the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of
the mass-consumer society in Britain and the US.
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