A Film by Erin Fleming for Paradoxical Paradise: An African American Digital Oral History and Mapping Project of Asbury Park. Featuring Claude Taylor and Madonna Carter Jackson. Presented by the […]
A tour of the magical city, Venice: Infinitely Avant Garde showcases masterpieces by Tiepolo, Canaletto, Rosalba Carriera and the intellectuals who fell in love with Venice: from Canova to Goethe, Lord Byron to Walter Scott, down to the great Hollywood stars drawn to its yearly Film Festival. 1600 years after its legendary foundation, Venice continues to be unique for its urban landscape and for its rich history, but above all, the city is unique for its identity, which combines the charm of decadence with the excitement of being on the cutting edge.
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film The Clay Bird (Bengali, 2002). Set against a 1960’s backdrop leading up to Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, THE CLAY BIRD tells the story of Anu, a boy sent away by his father to an Islamic school. Far from his family and the warmth of his region’s Hindu festivities, Anu struggles to break out of his shell and adapt to the school’s harsh monastic life. As the political divisions in the country intensify, an increasing split develops between the school’s students, just as Anu’s parents find themselves growing apart. Rather than be torn in half, Anu must decide which side he falls upon in this complex tale of tolerance, diversity, and the practice of Islam in a crises-ridden world.
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film Budrus (Israeli/Palestinian/American, 2009). Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites Palestinian political factions and invites Israeli supporters to join an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the front lines. Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today.
It’s just like book club but with albums! With new advances in technology, the way we consume music through our devices, apps and on demand streaming services like Pandora, Spotify and iTunes is making the idea of the “album” as an art form extinct. Get together with other music enthusiasts on Tuesday nights to discuss some of the greatest records of all-time! Listen to the album beforehand and then come prepared to discuss. This event will feature REM, Murmur.
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnian, 2020). The film dramatizes the events of the Srebrenica massacre, during which Serbian troops sent Bosniak men and boys to death in July 1995 led by Serbian convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić. Named for its protagonist, Quo Vadis, Aida? exposes the events through the eyes of a mother named Aida, a schoolteacher who works with the United Nations as a translator. After three and a half years under siege, the town of Srebrenica, close to the northeastern Serbian border, was declared a UN safety zone in 1993 and put under the protection of a Dutch battalion working for the UN.
Please join us for a film screening/panel discussion of the film From This Day Forward with director Sharon Shattuck and her parents Trisha and Marcia Shuttuck. With her own wedding just around the corner, filmmaker Sharon Shattuck returns home to examine the mystery at the heart of her upbringing: How her transgender father Trisha and her straight-identified mother Marcia stayed together against all odds. From This Day Forward is a moving portrayal of an American family coping with the most intimate of transformations. As the film evolves into a conversation about love and acceptance in a modern American family, it raises questions relevant to all of us. As individuals how do we adapt to sustain long-term love and relationships? Where do sexuality and gender intersect? And how do families stay together, when external forces are pulling them apart?
Join us for a World Cinema Series film screening/discussion illuminating the theme “Wartime Lives: Enduring and Transcending Violence and Occupation” by analyzing the message and impact of the film As We Forgive (2009). Directed by Laura Waters Hinson and narrated by Mia Farrow comes the award-winning documentary of two Rwandan women who struggle with the face-to-face encounter with the men who slaughtered their families during the 1994 genocide. These women and men speak for a nation still wracked by the grief of a genocide that killed one in eight Rwandans. Overwhelmed by an enormous backlog of court cases, the government released 50,000 perpetrators back to the very communities they helped to destroy. Without the hope of full justice, Rwanda has turned to a new solution of reconciliation. Come experience through their eyes the journey from death to life through forgiveness.
Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion! This month’s novel is Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land.
It’s 1963, when Trish, 18, walks home at night from her job at a Phoenix theater. Suddenly, a stranger brandishing a knife ties Trish up and forces her into the back seat of his 1953 Packard. He then takes her to a deserted road and brutally sexually assaults her. Determined to have her assailant jailed, Trish reports the sexual assault to the skeptical police. It’s only after Trish undergoes a polygraph test and an extremely humiliating physical exam, that the detectives discover other women have been similarly attacked. But no one could know that Trish’s commitment to finding justice would trigger a law that would transform a Nation.
