The Alan Lutkus
International Film Series
Presented by the Office of the Provost, and the
Departments of Anthropology, Communicative Disorders and Science,
Computer and Information Technology, English, Foreign Languages and Literatures,
History, Mathematics, and Sociology,
the Jones School of Business, the Latin American Studies Program,
and the IFS Committee

Spring 2006 Films
All film screenings are free

The Searchers (U.S., 1956; 119 min.)
Thursday, January 26, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Director John Ford was a favorite of Alan Lutkus, the Geneseo professor this series remembers, and to kick off the spring schedule we invite you to attend this film in Alan's honor. The Searchers is at once a classical Hollywood western and a complex meditation upon national and ethnic identity. Filmed at the height of the Cold War, it remains uncannily relevant to our post-9/11 debate over friends and enemies, the terrain of menace, violence, and retribution.
Discussant: Ken Cooper (English Department)

Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker (U.S., 1981; 63 min.)
Thursday, February 9, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Documentary portrait of the instrumental role Ella Baker played in the American civil rights movement. By looking at the 1960s from the perspective of Baker, affectionately known as “Fundi” (a Swahili word for a person who passes skills from one generation to another), this film adds an essential understanding of the U.S. civil rights movement.
Discussant: Emilye Crosby (History Department)

Girl in the Café (U.K./U.S., 2005; 94 min.)
Thursday, February 16, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Filmed in London and Reykjavik, Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral) cleverly and touchingly weaves romance with international politics in this movie about an aging, shy civil servant who meets a young woman in a café opposite Downing Street. When he invites her to accompany him to a G8 summit, he is surprised to find she is passionately concerned with world poverty and the need for more Third World aid.
Discussant: Rose-Marie Chierici (Anthropology Department)

Metropolis (Germany, 1927; 124 min.)
Thursday, February 23, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

This classic science fiction movie of German expressionism was reputedly inspired by director Fritz Lang's visit to New York City. Its presentation and reconciliation of the conflict between "head" and "hand" (the elite vs. the working classes) of a then-modern metropolitan industrial society is a hopeful expression of the ideals of social democracy. In German, with English subtitles.
Discussant: James Bearden (Sociology Department)

Battle of Algiers (Algeria/Italy, 1965; 117 min.)
Thursday, March 2, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Commissioned by the Algerian government, this is a surprisingly unbiased portrayal, from both sides of the front, detailing the war that ensued between France and Algeria as Algerians revolted against the French, seeking their independence. Internationally acclaimed for its newsreel-like authenticity, this film has been described as “[p]robably the most emotionally stirring revolutionary epic since Eisenstein’s Potemkin (Pauline Kael). In French and Arabic, with English subtitles.
Discussant: Tony Macula (Mathematics Department)

Harold and Maude (U.S., 1971; 71 min.)
Thursday, March 9, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

A riotous and memorable black comedy about Harold, a death-obsessed 20-year-old man who befriends, at a funeral, 79-year-old Maude, a woman with a zest for life. Harold and Maude fall in love, but when Harold announces to his mother that he is to be married to Maude, Maude has a surprise for Harold that is to change his life forever. Winner of Golden Globe awards for its two leading actors.
Discussant: Joe Dolce (CIT)

Brotherhood of War (South Korea, 2004; 140 min.)
Thursday, March 23, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Kang Je-gyu’s epic war drama about two brothers, Jin-tae and Jin-seok, who are drafted into the Korean War and catapulted into a world very different from their quiet, rural life. While fighting side-by-side on the frontlines, their lives follow quite divergent paths, superbly and emotionally portrayed in what became the highest grossing film ever released in Korea. In Korean, with English subtitles.
Discussant: Robert Owens (Communicative Disorders and Science Department)

Zelary (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Austria, 2003; 142 min.)
Thursday, March 30, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Set in the 1940s during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, this is the story of Eliska, a nurse, and her surgeon lover, members of a resistance movement who are discovered and are forced to flee. Eliska finds refuge in the Moravian village of Zelary. There, in the mountain cabin of a patient whose life she once saved, pretending to be his wife, she waits out the war. This was the Czech submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2003. In Czech, with English subtitles.
Discussant: Cynthia Klima (Foreign Languages and Literatures Department)

Paradise Now (France/Germany/Netherlands/Israel, 2005; 90 min.)
Thursday, April 13, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Shot on location in both Palestine and Israel (placing the lives of crew and cast at constant risk), Paradise Now is director Hany Abu-Assad's meticulously researched enthralling and compelling drama about the motivations, actions and anxieties of two suicide bombers driven to extremes by their beliefs. Winner of the 2006 Golden Globe award for best foreign film. In Arabic, with English subtitles.
Discussant: Harry Howe (School of Business)

The Motorcycle Diaries (U.S./Germany/U.K./Argentina/Chile/Peru/France, 2004; 128 min.)
Thursday, April 20, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. – Newton Hall 204

Visually resplendent “road movie” based on Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s diary of the journey he and Alberto Granada, his best friend, took across several South American countries in 1952 before Guevara began his career as a revolutionary. Directed by Walter Salles (Central Station), with Gael García Bernal (Y tu mama también) in the leading role, this highly acclaimed film (one Oscar for best original score) was described as “soulful and reflective… as gentle as it is potent” (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times). In Spanish and Quechua, with English subtitles.
Discussant: Rose McEwen (Foreign Languages and Literatures Department)