Current Events:

BCICS Documentary Film Series presents:

A Film by David Ofek, Ron Rotem and Elinor Kowarsky.
Screening followed by Q&A with director David Ofek

A winner of many international awards, David Ofek is renowned for his deeply serious outlook and his constant search for new fields of expression. His lat­est documentary film A Hebrew Lesson is a delightful if thought-provoking look at the problems of several immigrant students in a Hebrew language ulpan, where their personal stories meld with the complexi­ties of Israeli reality. The immense effort of learning a new language is revealed through their encounter with a strange culture and an unfamiliar environ­ment. Ofek’s film reveals Israeli society through the foreigner’s eyes.

Examining the immigrant experience through the eyes of multiethnic students in a language immersion class in Tel Aviv, this prize-winning and engrossing docu­mentary brings a fresh take on how non-natives cope with life in a new culture. Divided into monthly chap­ters, the film focuses on five students led by Yoela, her­self an immigrant to Israel. At times funny, at times sad, it showcases daily reality with irony. It maximizes the idea of the classroom as the first step toward a hoped-for melting pot.

David Ofek, born in 1968, grew up in the town of Ramat Gan, Israel. Besides being interested in mathematics and philosophy, he dreamed of making movies, and spent most of his free time during high school watching the great masterpieces at the Tel Aviv “Cinemateque.” After graduating from the Sam Spiegel Film & Tele­vision School in Jerusalem in 1993, Ofek continued devoting his talent and energy to creating movies that depict unique Israeli scenes and dilemmas. Always straddling a fine line between documentary and feature film, he keeps on challenging the obvious.

The screening and following discussion will take place Wednesday April 04, 2008 at the Library Forum Room at Northwestern University Main Library, starting at 4:00 pm.

........Special thanks to the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest

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CS Documentary Film Series :: Mon 01/21 : 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p. m.
Juliana Tafur, Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker
Rightful yet Right-less
Library Forum Room, Second Floor, South Tower, Northwestern University Main Library, 1970 Campus Drive

Over one million Sudanese who escaped their war-torn country now live in Cairo, Egypt.
Under international human rights agreements, these refugees have the right to education, employment, healthcare, welfare and protection.  But in Egypt they are right-less. They are not resettled to countries in the West, nor given the possibility to start a new life. The role of the Cairo office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is to protect all rightful refugees. So why is it turning its back on the Sudanese? This documentary explores the plight of the refugees, their failed expectations, hopelessness and despair.

Juliana Tafur is a journalist who now specializes on documentary film making. She directed, produced, shot and edited Rightful, yet Right-less, a documentary on the lives of Sudanese refugees in  Cairo , Egypt . Juliana is a graduate from the Medill  School of Journalism at  Northwestern University.

BCICS Documentary Film Series :: Mon 02/19 : 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p. m.
Jean-Marie Teno, Short and Documentary Film Director
Le Malentendu Colonial (The Colonial Misunderstanding)
Library Forum Room, Second Floor, South Tower, Northwestern University Main Library, 1970 Campus Drive

The film looks at Christian evangelism as the forerunner of European  colonialism in Africa, indeed, as the ideological model for the relationship between North and South even today. In particular it looks at the role of missionaries in Namibia on this the centenary of the 1904 German genocide of the Herrero people there.  It reveals how colonialism destroyed African beliefs and social systems and replaced them with European ones as the only acceptable route to modernity.

Jean-Marie Teno was born in 1954, in Cameroon and has been living since 1977 in France, where he studied audio-visual communication in Valenciennes. Since 1985 he has been working as a film critic for 'Buana Magazine' and as a television editor. For his second short film 'Hommage' (1987) he won the short-film award of the 'Festival Vues d'Afriques' in Montréal. His first and only full-length feature film 'Clando' was nominated in the same year for the category 'best film' at the international festival of French-speaking films in Namur.

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PAST FILM SCREENINGS

BCICS Documentary Film Series :: Mon 11/12 : 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Phil Ranstrom, Writer/Producer/Director
"Cheat You Fair: The Story of Maxwell Street"
Library Forum Room, Second Floor, South Tower, Northwestern University Library, 1970 Campus Drive

BCICS, Program in Asian American Studies, Program in Asian and Middle East Studies, Department of History, Department of Political Science present : Film Screening :: Thu 05/10 :: 6:30 - 9:00 p.m.
"Koryo Saram : The Unreliable People"
McCormick Tribune Center Forum

A special screening with invited guests:
Meredith Jung En Woo (Executive Producer)
Y. David Chung (Co-director, producer, co-writer)

Synopsis
In 1937, Stalin began a campaign of massive ethnic cleansing and forcibly deported everyone of Korean origin living in the coastal provinces of the Far East Russia near the border of North Korea to the unsettled steppe country of Central Asia 3700 miles away. This story of 180,000 Koreans who became political pawns during the Great Terror is the central focus of this film. With political scientist and executive producer Meredith Jung-En Woo and cameraman Matt Dibble, Chung traveled to film the survivors of  he deportation and their descendants who still live in Kazakhstan today. Koryo Saram (the Soviet Korean phrase for Korean person) tells the harrowing saga of survival in the open steppe country and the sweep of Soviet history through the eyes of these deported Koreans, who were designated by Stalin as an “unreliable people” and enemies of the state. Through recently uncovered archival footage and new interviews, the film follows the deportees’ history of integrating into the Soviet system while working under punishing conditions in Kazakhstan, a country which became a concentration camp of exiled people from throughout the Soviet Union. Today, in the context of Kazakhstan’s recent emergence as a rapidly modernizing, independent state, the story of the Kazakhstani-Koreans situated within this ethnically diverse country has resonance with the experience of many Americans and how they have assimilated to form new cultures in our world of increasingly displaced people.

Meredith Jung En Woo (executive producer) is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Korean Studies Program at the University of Michigan. Her teaching and research interests include International Political Economy, East Asian Politics, and U.S.-East Asian relations. Before joining the University of Michigan, she taught at Northwestern University, Columbia University and Colgate University. In 1996 she was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the Presidential Commission on U.S.-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy.

Y. David Chung (co-director, producer, co-writer) is an artist and filmmaker who has exhibited widely throughout the country and internationally. Chung began his career
collaborating as an artist on documentary films. His credits include “Surveillance, No Place to Hide” (HBO), “American Journey” (PBS), “Gardens of Paradise” (PBS), “The Forgotten People” (PBS), “Soldiers in Hiding” (HBO) and “Peace on Borrowed Time” (ABC). In 1996, he won the Best of Show Award with Matt Dibble for directing “Turtle Boat Head” at the Rosebud Film and Video Awards. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship in 1995. Chung is Associate Professor with the School of Art and Design and the Korean Studies Program at the University of Michigan.

Directed by Y. David Chung & Matt Dibble
Co-Director and Co-producer - Y. David Chung
Executive Producer - Meredith Woo
Co-Director, Director of Photography
and Editor - Matt Dibble
Historical Consultant - German Kim

Previous Events:

BCICS, Heft Production and the Consulate of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Chicago are proud to present an

Award-Winning Comedy from Bosnia-Herzegovina

"SKIES ABOVE THE LANDSCAPES”

November 27, 2006 at 6:30 pm

Northwestern University, McCormick Tribune Center Forum, 1870 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL

Reption to follow with the director and cast members

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OUR OWN PRIVATE BIN LADEN ©

October 11th,  Library Forum Room
Film Screening at 3:00, Discussion with the director to be followed at 5:00p.m.

OUR OWN PRIVATE BIN LADEN is a film about understanding the creation of the persona of Osama bin Laden as a phenomenon of the interplay between history, politics, global economics and the media.

The film highlights the historical background that led to the fatal link between post-Cold War politics and the emergence of new forms of terrorism that succeeded in establishing their own economy.  It traces the connection between privatization, deregulation and free market and the globalization of terrorism.

OUR OWN PRIVATE BIN LADEN examines the complicity between economic structures of "terror" and "the war on terror," their interdependencies, and the creation of the Bin Laden industry as a consequence.

The film explains why the world after September 11, 2001 is less the result of a stray act of terror but the consequence of a series of fatal decisions made from 1945 onwards.

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Samira Goetschel was born in Iran and fled the country with her family after her father was executed by the government of Ayatollah Khomeini. She spent her formative years in the United States. An alumnus of New York University film school, Goetschel's graduating film Clown De La Vie was the Best Short Film winner at the 1992 New York State Film Festival. She earned a Masters of Arts degree at Columbia University, and followed her passion for filmmaking with a short film ¿ about the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Goetschel's first feature-length documentary, Our Own Private Bin Laden was made over a three-year time span. It explores Osama bin Laden's rise to notoriety without using a single image of its subject.