“In the disappearance of small things, I read the tokens of my own dislocation, of my own transience. An exile reads change the way he reads time, memory, self, love, fear, beauty: in the key of loss.”
– Andre Aciman
What can film illuminate about the experience of the exile, who reads the world in the “key of loss”? How can cinema enable us to recognize the foreigner within ourselves? What do these stories reveal about withstanding transience and pain? In this series, we accompany migrants, exiles, and pilgrims across borders, observing how geographic displacement becomes a loss of psychic grounding—which can be liberating, as well as terrifying.
- COURSE COORDINATOR: Sandie Friedman, Ph.D.
- LOCATION: 6912 Ayr Lane, Bethesda, MD
- TIME: 7:30 pm
- COSTS: CE credit: $300 ($250 Member rate*)
$175 for General Audience
$20 for individual film session
*Want to get the member rate? Become a Friend - Sign up for these courses online or download a registration form
“Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity… By recognizing him in ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself.”
–Julia Kristeva
October 10
The
Band’s Visit (2007), 87min. (PG-13)
An Egyptian police band has been invited to perform in Israel, and they wind up by mistake in the isolated town of Bet Hatikvah, where they find shelter with local families. Dina, who runs the town café, takes charge of their visit and seeks a romantic connection with the painfully reserved band leader, Tawfiq Zacharya.
- Starring: Ronit Elkabetz, Sasson Gabai, Saleh Bakri
- Director: Eran Kolirin
- Discussant: Sandie Friedman, Ph.D.
November 14
Persepolis
(2007), 95 min. (PG-13)
Based on the two acclaimed graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis tells the story of the artist’s coming of age in revolutionary Iran. Marjane comes from a progressive intellectual family, loves popular music, and craves the ordinary freedoms of Western teenagers. Drawn in Satrapi’s striking black-and-white style, the film presents a young heroine who suffers through exile, first in her own country, and then abroad.
- Starring: Chiarra Mastoianni, Catherine Deneuve
- Director: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi
- Discussant: Tarpley Mann Long, MSW
December 12
The
Darjeeling Limited (2007), 91 min. (R)
Like Anderson’s other darkly comic films, The Darjeeling Limited focuses on a family of troubled eccentrics. Francis Whitman has arranged for his two younger brothers, Peter and Jack, to meet him in India and travel across the country by train. Francis wants their journey to be a bonding experience, a spiritual quest, and a chance to see their mother, who abandoned them as children to live in a monastery in the mountains of India.
- Starring: Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, Jason Schwartzman
- Director: Wes Anderson
- Discussant: Julie Eill, Psy.D.
January 9
Maria
Full of Grace (2004), 101 min. (R)
A smart, rebellious 17-year-old, Maria, is trapped in a poverty-stricken Colombian town, helping to support her family by packing flowers in a factory. When she discovers that she is pregnant, Maria seeks an escape route. Along with two other young women working as drug mules, Maria undergoes a grueling and traumatic passage to New York. Once there, she can envision a future for her unborn child.
- Starring: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Yenny Paola Vega
- Director: Joshua Marsten
- Discussant: Angela Martin, MSN
February 13
The Last Wave (1977) 106 min.
In this early film from Australian director, Peter Weir, a Sydney tax lawyer is asked to defend a group of Aborigines who have been accused of murder. As the attorney gets involved in the case, he starts having strange dreams and disturbing encounters, bringing him to the edge of Aboriginal “dream time” and apocalypse, crossing the border between modern society and ancient culture.
- Starring: Richard Chamberlain, David Gulpilil
- Director: Peter Weir
- Discussant: Robert Winer, MD
March 20
The
Lives of Others(2006) 137 min. (R)
An agent of the Stasi, the East German secret police, crosses over the boundary into the private lives of a writer and his girlfriend as he spies on them. Gerd Wiesler, the agent, subsists in self-imposed exile, and in his isolation, becomes absorbed in this secret life of surveillance. As consequence of his covert involvement with the writer, Wiesler must eventually make a life-altering moral choice.
- Starring: Ulrich Muehe, Sebastian Koch
- Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
- Discussant: Christy Zink, MFA
April 10
Dirty
Pretty Things (2002) 97 min.(R)
Okwe, a former doctor and political exile from Nigeria, works as a porter in a London hotel, inhabiting an underground world of illegal workers. When he is asked to unblock a toilet in one of the hotel rooms, he finds that the problem is a human heart. As Okwe investigates this gruesome mystery, he becomes involved with Senay, a young Turkish woman who has fled an arranged marriage.
- Starring: Audrey Tautou, Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Director: Stephen Frears
- Discussant: Julio Szmuilowicz, MD. May 9 (Inclement weather date)
