Film & Media Culture

While protecting his friend from a bully, WEI Bu pushes the tormentor down a staircase. WEI’s neighbor, WANG Jin, is estranged from his family and, with nothing to lose, decides to join him. Later the pair is joined by HUANG Ling, WEI’s classmate. She is bedeviled by a destructive affair with a married school official. Together, this desperate trio, decide their only hope is to flee. So, they board a bus towards Manchuria, where it is rumored that a circus elephant is said to be sitting still, seemingly oblivious to pain and tribulations of the world at large. (3h 50min) Free.

The story links together the lives of a number of protagonists, narrating the course of one single, tension-filled day from dawn to dusk, and along the way, painting a portrait of a society marked by selfishness. Berlin International Film Festival Winner: FIPRESCI Prize, Best First Feature Award Special Mention.

During the summer of 1990 in Chile, a small group of families lives in an isolated community below the Andes, building a new world away from urban excesses, with the emerging freedom that followed the recent end of the dictatorship. In this time of change and reckoning, 16-year-old Sofía and Lucas, and 10-year-old Clara, neighbours in this dry land, struggle with parents, first loves, and fears, as they prepare a big party for New Year’s Eve. They may live far from the dangers of the city, but not from those of nature. In Spanish with English subtitles. (1h 50min). Free.

In State vs Natasha Banina, a girl tells the story of her life in a small-town orphanage, and her desire to be free; break out of her world. From the inside of a “ZOOM” courtroom, she will make twists and turns through her unique appeal to audiences as the jurors, letting them into her world where she dreams about love, family, acceptance, adjusting and her future. Ultimately the two worlds collide and the audience gets to decide her fate. A Hirschfield International Film Series event. Free. 

Eight years after being raped on a beach near Santiago, a young filmmaker arms a kaleidoscope with dozens of video diaries, showing the wounds of the abuse, the re-victimizing legal proceedings and the friendship that accompanies it. In a voyage from which the question arises. What is a rape, really, and when does it end? A Hirschfield International Film Series event. (78 minutes). Free. 

Khadija (Saadia Bentai¨eb) is a fifty-eight-year-old Maghrebi cleaning woman living in Brussels in the wake of the 2016 bombings that shook the city. After work one night, she falls asleep on the last subway train, wakes up at the end of the line and has no choice but to make her way home—all the way across the city—on foot. Along the way, she has a series of encounters: with a security guard, a convenience store clerk, a group of teenagers. A Hirschfield International Film Series event. (85 minutes). Free. 

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Dawn Porter (TRAPPED, GIDEON’S ARMY), this film chronicles the life and career of the legendary civil rights activist and Democratic Representative from Georgia. In addition to her interviews with Lewis and his family, Porter’s primarily cinéma verité film also includes interviews with political leaders, Congressional colleagues, and other people who figure prominently in his life. A Hirschfield International Film Series event. (96 minutes). Free.

Peru, at the height of the political crisis of the 1980’s. Georgina is a young woman from the Andes whose newborn daughter is stolen at a fake health clinic. Her desperate search for the child leads her to the headquarters of a major newspaper, where she meets Pedro Campos, a lonely journalist who takes on the investigation. Based on a true story.  A Hirschfield International Film Series event. (97 minutes). Free.

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour (Virtual Version) is an 80-minute theatrical program of 6 short films selected from this year’s Festival. Widely considered the premier American showcase for short films and the launchpad for many now-prominent independent filmmakers for more than 30 years, the Short Film Tour includes fiction, documentary and animation from around the world, giving new audiences a taste of what the Festival offers. A Hirschfield International Film Series event. (80 minutes). Free.

The sensational winner of the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Boys State is a wildly entertaining and continually revealing immersion into a week-long annual program in which a thousand Texas high school seniors gather for an elaborate mock exercise: building their own state government. This documentary creates a complex portrait of contemporary American masculinity, as well as a microcosm of our often dispiriting national political divisions that nevertheless manages to plant seeds of hope. An Apple Original Films and A24 release.