Spring 2003 International Film Series
Featuring 35mm prints exclusively.
Screening on Sundays at 7:30 pm in the Trabant University Center Theater.
All foreign-language films are shown with subtitles.
Admission is free and open to the public.

Waiting for Happiness, Read My Lips, Personal Velocity, The Way Home, Spirited Away,
Unknown Pleasures,  All or Nothing, Rabbit Proof Fence (Replaces The Quiet Man)

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March 9 Waiting for Happiness [Heremakono]
(Mauritania, 2002) 95 min.

A young man returns to the village of his birth and discovers that he can no longer speak the local dialect. This "gentle and elliptical" film centers on youth out of step with the rhythms of home (Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter).

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March 16 Read My Lips [Sur mes lèvres]
(France, 2001) 118 min.

A hearing-impaired office worker enlists an ex-con in her plan to enact revenge on her workplace tormentors. What begins as a comedy of manners evolves into a caper film "rendered with a crisp, idiosyncratic flourish" (Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star).

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Adapted by Rebecca Miller from her own short stories, this Grand Jury Prize winner (Sundance 2002) examines three women (Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk) trying to regain control over the courses of their lives. "One of the finest pictures of the year" (Elvis Mitchell, New York Times).

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April 6 The Way Home [Jibeuro]
(South Korea, 2002) 85 min.

The story of a bratty boy from the city and his mute grandmother in the country, told with "simplicity, truth and a shimmering grace" (Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle).

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April 13 Spirited Away [Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi]
(Japan, 2001) 125 min.

"Two Thumbs up!" (Ebert & Roeper). This English-language version of master animator Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed film (top honors at the Berlin Film Festival, Japan's highest-grossing film of all time) follows a modern-day Alice lost in a world of spirits. "Prepare to be astonished" (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times).

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April 20 Unknown Pleasures [Ren xiao yao]
(China, 2002) 113 min.

Jia Zhang-ke, the director of Platform and Pickpocket, sets his latest film in the industrial city of Datong, where disaffected youth are tantalized by American culture. Inspired by a Tarantino movie, two friends plot a robbery; it does not end well.

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April 27 All or Nothing
(UK, 2002) 128 min.

Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Life is Sweet) composed this "tableau of extraordinary vividness and variety" (A.O. Scott, New York Times). A beaten-down family  discovers what they're made of one weekend in the projects of South London. "Strong stuff [from] the unsparing poet of the British working class" (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone).

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May 4 Rabbit Proof Fence
(Australia, 2002) 95 min.

"A revelation of astonishing emotional power" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). Based on a book by Doris Pilkington Garimara, Rabbit Proof Fence tells a story about the "stolen generations," mixed-race children removed from their families by the Australian government from 1905-71. Kenneth Branagh stars as the government-appointed "guardian" attempting to corral three children who have fled from their resettlement camp. "A paean to the beauty of the Australian countryside... [with]  the impact of a swift, hard slap in the face." (Stephen Holden, New York Times)

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Sponsored by the Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and
Public Events, the Office of the Provost, and the English Department's Film Program.

Director: Peter X Feng / Assistant: Kate Newell / Manager: Linda
Russell / Publicity: Diana Simmons

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This page was updated on April 29, 2003.