Year of Mediterranean Spring 2009 Film Series

All films will be shown in the Media Room of the Hill Freeman Library & Spruill Learning Center, starting at 1:30 p.m., unless otherwise noted.

January 23: "Il Postino" (Italy, 1994), directed by Michael Radford. Based on true events, Massimo Troisi plays a shy postman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret). Through Neruda's example and tutelage, the hero learns to think of his Italian fishing village in lyrical terms, as well as how to talk to women and even find the strength to take his political stands. Sweet as it is, the film finally pushes beyond its charming borders to become an even more complex and poignant story about the pain of growing into one's destiny.

January 30: "Le Grand Voyage" (France, 2004), directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi. Driving his traditional Muslim father (Mohamed Majd) across Europe en route to Mecca, thoroughly modern college student Reda (Nicolas Cazale) finds little to say to the old man. But along the way, as the gap between father and son begins to narrow, the two discover that ultimately it's the journey - not the destination - that matters.

February 13: "Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets" (Morocco, 2000), directed by Nabil Ayouch. Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boukber are a group of urchins living on the hard streets of Casablanca, their everyday lives filled with violence, begging and indifference. To survive, the four youths create a bond of friendship and family among them, but that bond is soon cut short by a senseless tragedy. This highly acclaimed drama reminds us of the power of hope and dreams even in the harshest of circumstances.

February 20: "Rachida" (France, 2003), directed by Yamina Bachir. In this moving and award-winning feature film, Rachida (Ibtissem Djouadi) is a confident young elementary school teacher living in the African nation of Algeria during the 1990s, a time of great turmoil and unrest in the country. Rachida's life is turned upside down when she finds herself at the center of an assassination attempt after she stands up to a terrorist group by refusing to plant explosives in her classroom and put countless lives in jeopardy.

March 13: "A Room with a View" (USA/UK, 1986), directed by James Ivory. Splendidly adapted from the novel by E.M. Forster (8 Academy Award nominations), it's a comedy of the heart, a passionate romance and a study of repression within the British class system of manners and mores. It's that system of rigid behavior that prevents young Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) from accepting the loving advances of a free-spirited suitor (Julian Sands), who fears that she will follow through with her engagement to a priggish intellectual (Daniel Day-Lewis) whose capacity for passion is virtually nonexistent. During and after a trip to Italy with her protective companion (Maggie Smith), Lucy gradually gets in touch with her true emotions.

March 27: "The Syrian Bride" (Israel, 2004), directed by Eran Riklis. This award-winning film digs into the Middle East conflict with the tale of a Druze woman who lives with her family in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Her family makes plans for her to marry a Syrian television star from Damascus, but the wedding must take place at the border, and once she marries and crosses into Syria, she'll never be able to return home.

April 3: "Battle of Algiers" (Italy, 1966) directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. One of the most influential films in the history of political cinema, "The Battle of Algiers" focuses on the harrowing events of 1957, a key year in Algeria's struggle for independence from France. Shot in the streets of Algiers in documentary style, the film vividly recreates the tumultuous Algerian uprising against the occupying French in the 1950s. As violence escalates on both sides, the French torture prisoners for information and the Algerians resort to terrorism in their quest for independence. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafés. The French win the battle, but ultimately lose the war as the Algerian people demonstrate that they will no longer be suppressed.

April 17: "Before the Rain" (Macedonia, 1994), directed by Milcho Manchevski. The first film made in the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, "Before the Rain" crosscuts the stories of an orthodox Christian monk (Grégoire Colin), a British photo agent (Katrin Cartlidge), and a native Macedonian war photographer (Rade Šerbedžija) to paint a portrait of simmering, entrenched ethnic and religious hatred about to reach its boiling point. Made during the strife of the war-torn Balkan states in the nineties, this gripping triptych of love and violence is also a timeless evocation of the loss of pastoral innocence, and remains one of recent cinema's most poetic evocations of the futility of war.

Film synopses courtesy of amazon.com and netflix.com

• For more information on the Year of the Mediterranean please contact:

Dr. Anne Good
Steering Committee Chair
770-720-5570
AMG@reinhardt.edu