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Compassion: The Radical Challenge | 30th Annual Film Series

Sundays, 2 PM, Kerr McGee Auditorium in the Meinders School of Business
NW 27th Street and McKinley Ave, Ƶ, OK 73106
A discussion session follows each film for those who wish to stay
Free Admission, Donations Appreciated
Director: Dr. Harbour Winn, [email protected]
For More Information, Call (405) 208-5472

September 25, 2011, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, Brazil (1959), 100 Min.

Set amidst the frenzy of carnival time in Rio de Janeiro, the opening film Black Orpheus combines fantastic fact with frenzied fiction. Camus grafts the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice onto the modern slums of Rio at carnival time.

October 9, 2011, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry, South Korea (2010), 139 Min.

Poetry is about an aging woman who is faced with a crippling medical diagnosis and complex family realities, but finds strength and purpose when she enrolls in a poetry class. Chang-dong's follow-up to his acclaimed “Secret Sunshine” is considered a masterful study of the subtle empowerment—and moral compass—of an elderly woman. It won the best screenplay prize at the Cannes International Film Festival.

October 23, 2011, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

George Sluizer’s The Vanishing, USA (1993), 109 Min.

A psychological thriller, The Vanishing tells the story of a young man's obsessive search for his girlfriend after she disappears at a rest stop during a short trip. The film, frightening and moving with a chilling conclusion, is a small masterpiece as director Sluizer confronts and examines the true nature of evil and obsession in all its methodical, exacting banality.

November 6, 2011, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

Ken Loach’s Kes, UK (1969), 110 Min.

Named one of the 10 best British films of the century by the British Film Institute, Kes stands as cinema’s quintessential portrait of working-class Northern England. The story is about Billy, a 15-year-old miner’s son whose close bond with a wild kestrel provides him with a spiritual escape from his dreary life. Using real locations and nonprofessional actors, Loach’s poignant coming-of-age drama remains one of England’s most beloved and influential films.

January 22, 2012, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

Jean Renoir’s The River, India (1951), 99 Min.

Renoir described his film with the quote, “a film about India without elephants and tiger hunts.” Guided by Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel, he rejected the India of exotic action and spectacle to make a meditative film set beside a tributary of the Ganges. Renoir’s entrancing color feature contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the river, around which their daily lives unfold. Into this expat community of schoolgirls and widows arrives a wounded American war veteran whose presence awakens a host of desires. The River’s success launched a new era of portraying India on screen. Film director Martin Scorsese called it one of “the two most beautiful color films ever made. I watch that film three times a year. Sometimes four.”It was one of the two most requested films on the evaluation forms from last year’s Ƶ film series.

February 5, 2012, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven, Iran (1997), 89 Min.

After a boy loses his sister's pair of shoes, he goes on a series of adventures in order to find them. When he can't, he tries a new way to "win" a new pair.

February 19, 2012, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

Claudia Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow, Spain (2009), 94 Min.

Winner of the Golden Bear for best picture at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival and Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, The Milk of Sorrow reflects the legacy of sexualized violence. Gently paced and exquisitely shot, its story—tinged with magical realism—tells of an anxious young woman finding her way in the world after the death of her mother and Peru’s grim decadesof civil strife with the Shining Path insurgents. Plumbing the generational reverberations of trauma, believed by the indigenous population to be passed on through a mother’s milk, Llosa. The niece of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, explores the possibility of female empowerment in a culture suffocated by superstition and poverty.

March 4, 2012, Kerr McGee Auditorium, 2 PM

Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff, Japan (1954), 124 Min.

In medieval Japan a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression.

Admission to the film series is free to the public. Donations to help sustain the institute’s mission are appreciated. Donations can be made at each film, mailed to the Ƶ Film Institute Endowment or to the Ƶ Film Institute’s Designated Endowment in the Community Foundation of the Kirkpatrick Family Fund. OCU University and the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Endowment Fund for the University’s Center for Interpersonal Studies through Film and Literature also support the institute.

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