Experience the overthrow of a 30-year regime of oppression, corruption, and abuse in Stefano Savona's documentary, Tahir: Liberation Square. Savona introduces us to young Egyptians who, day by day, come to the Square, chanting, marching and discussing the bright future of a free Egypt. We feel their exhilaration during an inspirational speech by Google executive Wael Ghonim, whose Facebook page helped spark the revolution. We feel their anger as an ex-convict admits that Mubarak hired prisoners as thugs to quell the demonstrators.
Amid a strict Muslim rearing and a social life he's never had, Tariq enters college confused. New peers, family and mentors help him find his place, but the 9-11 attacks force him to face his past and make the biggest decisions of his life.
2013 Academy Award Nominee, Documentary spanning 5 years of the struggle of one Palestinian villager against the Israeli Separation Barrier threatening his village, from the point of view of the 5 cameras destroyed in the process of making the film (Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi, 2011, 94 min.)
Center for Russian and East European Studies, European Studies Center, European Union Center of Excellence, Global Studies Center In conjunction with: boundary 2, Department of Film Studies
Presenter: Nergis Ertürk, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Penn State University
According to the New York Times, Michael Sfard is the Israeli human rights and peace movement’s leading lawyer. He has brought scores of human rights and land-use cases challenging Israel’s occupation politicies in the Palestinian territories, and represented hundreds of soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied territories. And as the Christian Science Monitor and Jewish Forward put it: “Young lawyer Michael Sfard has achieved something that the White House and left-leaning Israeli political leaders could not.
A decade ago, Hamza Perez, born Jason, was a drug dealer on America's mean streets. The child of Puerto Rican parents, he had two recurring competing dreams at night: in one he was in prison by age 21, and in the other he was dead. New Muslim Cool is the story of how, as Hamza laughingly puts it, "both [dreams] came true," albeit in unpredictable ways.
