Upcoming Programs (Updated 11/15/2009)
WVU Cultural Attaches Program | Brown Bag Lunch Film and Discussion SeriesThe Benefits of Being Appalachian Series
WVU Cultural Attaches Program
The WVU Office of Student Life - Multicultural Programs will continue to host the WVU Cultural Attaches Program, offering presentations by official representatives of nations located on different continents to inform the WVU community about their cultures and current themes of interest. The goal is to enhance the WVU community's intercultural awareness and understanding of other peoples and cultures.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009: Peruvian Cultural Attache (in memory of Cecilia Rollins)
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Brown Bag Lunch Film and Discussion Series
The Office of Student Life - Multicultural Programs will continue to host a brown bag lunch film and discussion series on Thursdays from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM at the Gluck Theater in the Mountainlair. A different culture is profiled each week by the appropriate representative from that country/culture and by showing a short film with an opportunity for discussion afterwards as follows. These events are free and open to all WVU faculty, staff and students. Free pizza will be available on a first come, first served basis.
September 10: Paradise Now is a 2005 controversial Oscar-nominated film that tells the story of two young men from the West Bank, who decide to volunteer as suicide bombers for a radical and militant group. This movie won a 2006 Golden Globe for best foreign language movie. This event is free and open to the public. Pizza will be served on a first-come, first-served basis. Sponsored by the WVU Office of Student Life-Multicultural Programs. For more information, call the Office of Multicultural Programs at 304-293-0890.
September 24: Tinta Roja, a 2000 Peruvian drama directed by Francisco J. Lombardi, will be presented by Orlando Ugarte, WVU graduate student in Mechanical Engineering. This film won awards at the Cartagena Film Festival, Havana Film Festival, Lima Latin American Film Festival, and San Sebastian International Film Festival. The plot centers around on Alfonso, a new journalist at a seedy tabloid newspaper. This event is free and open to the public. Pizza will be served on a first-come, first-served basis. Sponsored by the WVU Office of Student Life-Multicultural Programs. For more information, call the Office of Multicultural Programs at 304-293-0890.
October 1: Garifuna Resistance, Voices from Afar is a 48-minute documentary created and presented by Dr. Maximo Martinez and Raymond Keller, co-founders of Black Fenix Productions. The documentary is about a neglected group of the African Diaspora, the Garifuna peoples of Central America, who are sometimes referred to as the Black Caribs. The film highlights the struggle of the Garifuna in their homelands as well as in immigrant communities in the United States.
October 8: In honor of GLBT Heritage Month, La ley del deseo, aka Law of Desire, will be featured. This 1987 movie was directed by acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. The film will be presented by Dr. Daniel Ferreras, member of COSO (Council on Sexual Orientation). La ley del deseo focuses on a complex love triangle between three men. This 1987 picture follows the more serious tone set by Almodovar's 1986 film Matador, which explores the ways in which society represses an individual's true desires with tragic consequences. This film won an award for best feature film at the 1987 Berlin International Film Festival.
October 15: Prayers for Bobby will be presented by Neal Wahab, BiGLTM member, in the Mountainlair Gluck Theater in observance of Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Heritage Month and 2009 Pride Week. Academy Award nominee and Gloden Globe winner Sigourney Weaver stars in this emotional true story about a 1970's religious suburban housewife and mother who struggles to accept her young son, Bobby, being gay and is convinced that praying and church activities can cure him. Desperate for his mother's approval and guilty for not being "the perfect son," Bobby soon falls into depression and self-loathing and is driven to suicide. The tragedy causes the mother to question her faith and ultimately changes her views in ways that she never could have imagined.
October 22: West Side Story, the 1961 classic movie adapted from he Broadway musical written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, will be presented by Danielle Menendez and Daniela Denis, Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority Chapter officers, in the Gluck Theater in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month and Diversity Week 2009. Set in New York in the 1950 's, the musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in American musical theatre. The film won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Rita Moreno, as Anita, is the first and only Hispanic female and one of ten performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony and, at the time the second Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award.
November 5: A Thousand Roads, a 2005 documentary directed by Chris Eyre and produced by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, will be presented by Bonnie Brown, WVU Native American Studies Coordinator, from 11:30 AM to 1 PM in the Gluck Theater, on the occasion of American Indian Heritage Month. Rather than presenting a conventional historical perspective, the film is composed of short contemporary fiction about individuals, belonging to a specific community: a stressed-out Mohawk stockbroker in Manhattan; a young Inupiat girl sent to live with her grandmother in Barrow, Alaska; a Navajo gang member who must find his core values in his reservation on the mesas of New Mexico; and a Quechua healer in Peru, attempting to save a sick child. Screenwriter Joy Harjo, a poet and member of the Creek Nation, was charged with finding stories that fulfilled that mission.