Spring 2014 S-CAR World Café Film Series
In August 2013, the John Burton Library in collaboration with the centers and working groups at S-CAR, started a World Café film series meant to provide a space for students to have alternative discussions, outside the structure of academia about issues facing individuals. As Oscar Wilde once said, “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” Based on this theme, a well selected list of movies and documentaries that touched on themes such as race stereotypes in Europe as seen in The Intouchables; LGBT rights in Uganda as seen in Call me Kuuchu, and the hidden politics of the United Nations as seen in U.N. Me among others, were selected and shown to the S-CAR community. Although the messages that these movies and documentaries conveyed were powerful, the added value to those films was in the rich discussions that accompanied their viewing.
Based on the success of this initiative from the first half of the academic year, the World Cafe film series will proceed with another well selected group of films and documentaries through Spring 2014. The series will continue to shed light on issues ranging from the most unbearable deprivation of basic needs to the most unacceptable desecration of one's entity. When the fight for education gets mixed up with the fight for survival and becomes a revolutionary movement led by children who want to learn, as seen in Girl Rising (to be shown on 1/28/14 2:00 to 4:00 pm), or when two individuals take it upon themselves to rob 56,000 citizens of the right to vote, as seen in American Blackout (3/11/14 2:00- 4:00 pm), or even when the strongest military body in the world robs its members of the security and freedom it claims to fight for, as seen in The Invisible War (4/8/14 2:00-4:00 pm); people will fight. The fight may come from the camera lens of a man in Palestine who refused to stop filming as he helplessly watched the building of a fence which divided his land, as seen in Five Broken Cameras (4/22/14 2:00-4:00 pm) or it may come through the tears of a child soldier in Sierra Leone forced to shoot his father, as seen in Johnny Mad Dog (on 3/25/14 2:00-4:00 pm). The existence of corruption and brutality is not new news to anyone, nor is the existence of those fighting for civility and justice. This film series delivers the viewer from the broad and general bird’s eye view of the selected issues to a clearer cognizance of the intricacies woven into the fabric of each issue. The full list of films and brief descriptions can be found here: scar.gmu.edu/ events/film-series.