Quicklinks Brochure Screen/Society Schedule FVD Events Mailing Lists FDS Login Courses

---

Schedule of Screenings:

Tuesday January 27 (narrative feature):
The Visitor -- discussion to follow!
(Thomas McCarthy, 2008, 104 min, USA , in English, Color, 35mm)
-- Oscar nominee for Best Actor (Richard Jenkins) at the upcoming 2009 Academy Awards!

In a world of six billion people, it only takes one to change your life. Sixty-two-year-old Walter Vale is sleepwalking through his life. Having lost his passion for teaching and writing, he fills the void by unsuccessfully trying to learn to play classical piano. When his college sends him to Manhattan to attend a conference, Walter is surprised to find a young couple has taken up residence in his apartment. Victims of a real estate scam, Tarek, a Syrian man, and Zainab, his Senegalese girlfriend, have nowhere else to go.

In the first of a series of tests of the heart, Walter reluctantly allows the couple to stay with him. Touched by his kindness, Tarek, a talented musician, insists on teaching the aging academic to play the African drum. The instrument's exuberant rhythms revitalize Walter's faltering spirit and open his eyes to a vibrant world of local jazz clubs and Central Park drum circles. As the friendship between the two men deepens, the differences in culture, age and temperament fall away. After being stopped by police in the subway, Tarek is arrested as an undocumented citizen and held for deportation. As his situation turns desperate, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friend with a passion he thought he had long ago lost.
-- Followed by a discussion led by Kenan Institute for Ethics Director and immigration expert Noah Pickus, along with Institute Associate Director Suzanne Shanahan and Assistant Director Kim Abels!

---

Tuesday February 24 (documentary):
The Axe in the Attic – discussion to follow (with the filmmakers in person)!
(Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, 2007, 110 min, USA , in English, Color, DVD)

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, drawn together by outrage, take a sixty-day road trip from New England to New Orleans . Along the way they meet evacuees and witness the loss, dignity, perseverance and humor of people who have become exiles in their own country. The breakdown of trust between a government and its citizens, the influence of race, class, and gender – as well as the ethics of documentary filmmaking itself – form the backdrop for this universal story of the search for home.  What does it mean to be exiled in your own country? Drawn together by outrage, documentary filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small embark on a sixty-day road trip from New England to Louisiana, and ultimately into the Katrina devastation zone to meet evacuees who have lost their homes. They make the uneasy choice of integrating themselves into the story, "because when you're two white northerners heading South, remaining behind the camera just doesn't feel like an option." When the film opens, it is six months since Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees breached causing the largest internal migration in American history. We first see the eerie beauty and horror of the shattered landscape, draped in heavy fog and emptied of its residents. The story of an American Diaspora unfolds – the displaced struggling with loss of home, family, and culture. Emotions range from deep pain to surprising humor, as filmmakers and subjects tackle questions of race, class, and our government's failure to protect its own.
-- Discussion to follow, led by filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, along with Associate Director Suzanne Shanahan and Assistant Director Kim Abels from the Kenan Institute for Ethics!

---

Tuesday March 24 (documentary):
The Betrayal - Nerakhoon -- discussion to follow (with filmmaker Ellen Kuras in person)!
(Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, 2008, 95 min, USA, in English and Lao with English subtitles, Color, 35mm) -- Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary at the 2009 Academy Awards!

The directorial debut of acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), The Betrayal is a lyrical film that fluidly incorporates archival footage, cinema vérité, revealing personal interviews and visually poetic montages. During the Vietnam War, more bombs were dropped on Laos than were deployed during World War I and World War II combined. Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath have collaborated to create what is at once an epic story of a people brutally vanquished by a dirty war and also an intimate portrait of Phrasavath's own family's struggle to confront the psychic wounds of exile. Beautifully filmed over the course of twenty-three years, The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) offers a stirring portrait of life in exile, the far-reaching consequences of war, and the unbreakable bonds of family, as it traces one family's extraordinary journey from war-torn Laos to the mean streets of New York .
-- Followed by a discussion, led by filmmaker Ellen Kuras along with the Kenan Institute for Ethics's Associate Director Suzanne Shanahan and Assistant Director Kim Abels!

---

Tuesday April 14 (documentary):
Primo Levi's Journey -- discussion to follow!
(Davide Ferrario, 2006, 92 min, Italy, in English, Italian, German, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Moldavian, Romanian, and Hungarian with optional English subtitles, B/W & Color, 35mm)

Primo Levi's harrowing memoir If This Is a Man appeared in the U.S. in 1959 as Survival in Auschwitz; historians now regard it as the most critically important written conveyance of the horrors within the Nazi concentration camps. But the account in that text only represents half of Levi's story. The other half began after his release from Auschwitz . Instead of simply returning to his native Turin , Levi and 600 others were forcibly shipped east -- thousands of miles away from their homes. Thus began a grueling, trans-national journey that Levi undertook, across war-ravaged Europe and back to Turin -- a journey that took all of 12 months to complete, and that filled him, alternately, with incredulity, anger, wonder, and astonishment -- as he reflected on the meaning of his own survival in the camps. Levi died in 1987; as a tribute to the belletrist and historian, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Davide Ferrario (Far from Rome, Borderline) retraces Levi's route with his cameras in Primo Levi's Journey. Ferrario travels through Ukraine , Belarus , Moldavia , Romania , Hungary , Germany , and south to his native country, evaluating, at each stop, the sociological climate and the various ways in which Eastern Europe has alternately evolved and remained static over the prior 60 years. Ferrario touches on numerous issues relevant to the contemporary sociopolitical landscape of Eastern Europe , as the Russian satellite countries struggle to develop national identities, and concurrently reflects on the experiences of Levi's original trip. Celebrated Polish filmmaker Andrezj Wajda appears early on and serves as a "tour guide" for one of the first legs of the voyage.
-- Followed by a discussion, led by Kenan Institute for Ethics Associate Director Suzanne Shanahan and Assistant Director Kim Abels!

---

Have questions about our schedule? Contact Hank Okazaki at hokazak@duke.edu

Return to the current Screen/Society screening schedule