Schedule of Films:

Thursday, September 21, 2023

7:00 PM -- NORTH BY CURRENT
Angelo Madsen Minax
(USA, 2021, 86 min., English with English captions)

Location: Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium. Newhouse III

Q&A with Angelo Madsen Minax

North by Current is a visual rumination on the understated relationships between mothers and children, truths and myths, losses, and gains. After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown, preparing to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor, and trans embodiment. Lyrically assembled images, decades of home movies, and ethereal narration form an idiosyncratic and poetic undertow that guide a viewer through lifetimes and relationships. Like the relentless Michigan seasons, the meaning of family shifts, as Madsen, his sister, and his parents strive tirelessly to accept each other. Poised to incite more internal searching than provide clear statements or easy answers, the film dives head first into the challenges of creating identity, the agony of growing up, and the ever-fickle nuances of family.

Friday, September 22, 2023

7:00 PM -- TWICE COLONIZED

Aaju Peter appears in Twice Colonized by Lin Alluna, an official selection of the World Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | Photo by Angela Gzowski Photography. All photos are copyrighted and may be used by the press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage of Sundance Institute programs. Photos must be accompanied by a credit to the photographer and/or 'Courtesy of Sundance Institute.' Unauthorized use, alteration, reproduction or sale of logos and/or photos is strictly prohibited.

Lin Alluna
(Denmark/Greenland/Canada, 2022, 92 min., Kalaaallisut, Inuktitut, and Danish with English subtitles)

Location: Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium. Newhouse III

Q&A with Lin Alluna

Aaju Peter is a force of nature. She is a renowned Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and activist who defends the human rights of Indigenous peoples of the Arctic and a fierce protector of her ancestral lands. She works to bring her colonizers in both Canada and Denmark to justice and deploys her effusive spirit and illuminating wit to provoke self-examination and personal responsibility among Westerners for imposing their colonial ways. As Aaju launches an effort to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union, she also embarks upon a complex and deeply personal journey to mend her own wounds, including the unexpected passing of her youngest son.

In this inspiring, emotionally powerful documentary, the beautiful lens of director Lin Alluna journeys alongside an extraordinary human being as she plumbs through the social and personal wreckage of sanctioned white dominance to find the strength — within her abilities, her community, and her own vulnerabilities — to transform her hardships and painful experiences into something amazing that can inspire others who also struggle with the poisonous effects of colonialism (Sundance Film Festival).

Saturday, September 23, 2023

1:00 PM -- MY FAVORITE JOB
Sashko Protyah

Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building

My Favourite Job is an experimental film documenting the practices of a volunteer group that evacuated people from Mariupol in the spring of 2022, when the city was surrounded by Russian troops and civilian targets were heavily bombed daily. They meet after each trip to share information, support each other, and talk about their traumatic experiences. The film includes images from the volunteers’ mobile phone videos, the filmmaker’s personal archive, and animation models: images that evidence ex negativo the warfare-influenced ban on the circulation of images of Mariupol. Any documentation is made under extreme danger of getting killed at the hands of the occupying army, since the said photo or video may contain evidence of war crimes. The unrated first-perspective videos of mass destructions that appear in the beginning of the film were recorded and carried out of Mariupol at the operators’ own risk.

1:00 PM -- WHEN SPRING CAME TO BUCHA
Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz

Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building

Q&A with Mila Teshaieva

The small Ukrainian towns of Borodianka, Bucha, and Irpin near the capital of Kyiv were occupied by the Russian army for several weeks. Tanks and snipers targeted gardens between houses. After a month of intense fighting, the Russian army withdrew. In the completely destroyed town of Bucha, the streets were strewn with the corpses of dozens of killed civilians. How do people live there now, in the light of such atrocities? How are the survivors coping? When Spring Came to Bucha gives them the opportunity to tell their stories: Yuri, municipal services manager, struggles to keep people supplied with clean drinking water. Liudmyla searches for her husband’s body. She had buried him in a makeshift grave in the garden, but somebody has dug up the body, probably to bury him elsewhere. Olenka is the only pupil in the classroom of School No. 1; two of her classmates were killed, the rest have left the country. In the midst of all the suffering, a young couple get married – life goes on. This film tells stories about life after the suspected war crimes were committed in Bucha and the surrounding area. Stories about destroyed lives – about atrocities and abysses, but also stories about humanity and hope – as the war in Ukraine continues to rage.

4:00 PM -- FRACTURE
Artist talk by Evan Starling-Davis

Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building

In Evan Starling-Davis’s innovative exhibition, viewers can interact with the Urban Video Project’s projection on the facade of the Everson using their personal smart devices to explore the virtual world of Fracture. The installation is an Afro-Surreal poetic experience featuring 3D renderings of objects from Afro-diasporic culture in local collections and archives, including SUArt Museum, the Everson Museum, SU’s Special Collection Research Center, and the Community Folk Art Center. In this artist talk, Starling-Davis will discuss the project and allow audience members to participate in this interactive work.

Evan Starling-Davis is a Syracuse-based narrative artist, curator, and digital-age griot using a Black/Queer surrealist lens to unearth distant pasts and buried histories while promoting radical self-healing. As a community organizer and scholar-practitioner with a deep-rooted social practice of art exposure, equitable literacies, accessibility, and community mindfulness, Starling-Davis strives to create pathways for Black imagination and history to thrive.

7:00 PM -- PEACOCK LAMENT
Sanjeewa Pushpakumara

Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building

Q&A with actor/producer Sangeetha Godagama and producer Suranga Handapangoda

After the death of his mother, Amila (Akalanka Prabashwara) relocates his two brothers and two sisters from their village in rural East Sri Lanka to the capital of Colombo, where they set up camp in a half-built shell of a building. Struggling on a wage from a Chinese-owned construction site, Amila takes work with Malini (Sabeetha Perera), whose ‘Baby Farm’ business traffics the infants from unwanted pregnancies to wealthy foreigners. At first, the job working for Malini seems ideal. It’s well paid and relatively easy. Amila’s duties include collecting young pregnant women in a converted biscuit truck and delivering them to the Baby Farm dormitories. There, according to the contract they have signed with Malini’s illegal organization, they must relinquish their phones and give up their babies without question once they have been chosen by customers. Sometimes, however, the young women have second thoughts, and Amila is required to track down runaways and return them. He empathizes with these desperate women and, once he strikes up a friendship with one of them, Nadee (Dinara Punchihewa), Amila finds the job increasingly at odds with his conscience. The fourth dramatic feature from award-winning director Sanjeewa Pushpakumara is a wrenching autobiographical story of survival, and of emotional connections forged under duress (Wendy Ide, Screen Daily).

Dates: September 21 - 23, 2023

Venue: Various Locations in Syracuse, NY

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