Cogut Institute for the Humanities
  •  Location: Granoff Center for the Creative ArtsRoom: Martinos Auditorium

    Film-Thinking presented Sacrificed Youth, a 1986 film directed by Nuanxing Zhang, followed by a conversation that featured:

    • Timothy Bewes (English | Brown)
    • Cassandra Guan (Center for Art, Culture, and Technology | MIT)
    • Lingzhen Wang (East Asian Studies | Brown)
    • Lu Wang (Music | Brown)

    ABOUT THE FILM

    Sacrificed Youth (Qing chun ji)
    China, 1986 (96 mins)
    Directed by Nuanxing Zhang

    Cast: Fengxu Li, Yuanzheng Feng, Tao Song, and Jianguo Guo | Screenplay: Manling Zhang and Nuanxing Zhang | Cinematography: Deyuan Mu and Wei Teng | Editing: Qihua Zhao | Music: Sola Liu and Xiaosong Qu | Language: Mandarin with English Subtitles

    “A lyrical, elegiac tale about the generation of students banished to remote agricultural regions of China during the Cultural Revolution. 17-year-old Li Chun, a shy, even repressed Han girl from Beijing, is sent to work in a small village in the Dai countryside, down near Laos. At first disdainful of the natives’ rural superstitions and poverty, only slowly does she overcome her outsider status and learn the value of the Dais’ appreciation of beauty, nature, and human warmth. An unsentimental celebration of tradition, exotic landscape, and cultural independence, Zhang’s film is both a loving portrait of Dai life and a sensitive, partly autobiographical study of one girl’s hesitant awakening to sensuality. Infused with a discreet, gentle eroticism and a final, touching sense of loss, it charms through its narrative simplicity and visual elegance.” — Time Out magazine


    Film-Thinking is a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to think the many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. This project has been made possible, in part, by the Brown Arts Institute. Read more.

  •  Location: Granoff Center for the Creative ArtsRoom: Martinos Auditorium

    Il Cinema Ritrovato at Brown and Film-Thinking presented L’amore, a 1948 anthology film directed by Roberto Rossellini, followed by a conversation featuring Timothy Bewes (English | Brown), Kristina Mendicino (German Studies | Brown), Massimo Riva (Italian Studies | Brown), and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Italian Studies | Brown).


    ABOUT THE FILM

    L’amore [Love]
    Italy, 1948 (79 mins)
    Directed by Roberto Rossellini

    Cast: Anna Magnani (segments “Una voce umana” and “Il miracolo”); Federico Fellini, Peparuolo, and Amelia Robert (segment “Il miracolo”) | Screenplay: Roberto Rossellini and Anna Benvenuti, based on the play “La voix humaine” by Jean Cocteau (segment “Una voce umana”); Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli, based on the novel Flor de santidad by Ramón del Valle-Inclán (segment “Il miracolo”) | Cinematography: Robert Juillard and Otello Martelli (segment “Una voce umana”); Aldo Tonti (segment “Il miracolo”) | Editing: Eraldo Da Roma (segment “Una voce umana”) | Music: Renzo Rossellini | Language: Italian with English Subtitles

    L’amore is made up of two distinct short films, both starring the Italian powerhouse Anna Magnani. In “Una voce umana” [“A Human Voice”], an unnamed woman has a fraught conversation over the phone with her lover, and in “Il miracolo” [“The Miracle”] the devoutly religious Nannina believes she has been impregnated by Saint Joseph. It was this second film that sparked outrage in the United States, and the film was yanked from its New York premiere and condemned by the National Legion of Decency and Catholic authorities for indecency. When the New York Board of Regents revoked the film’s license entirely, distributor Joseph Burstyn took the battle all the way to the Supreme Court, who, in a unanimous 1952 ruling, decided that film was a form of artistic expression, and therefore free speech protected by the First Amendment. — Adapted from the Gene Siskel Film Center


    Film-Thinking is a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to think the many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. This project has been made possible, in part, by the Brown Arts Institute. Read more.

  •  Location: List Art BuildingRoom: 120

    Film-Thinking presented Atlantics, a 2019 film directed by Mati Diop. The post-screening conversation included Brown University faculty members Timothy Bewes (English), Veronica Fitzpatrick (Modern Culture and Media), and Rebecca Schneider (Modern Culture and Media) and, from Yale University, Yasmina Price (African American Studies and Film and Media Studies).


    About the Film

    Atlantics ( Atlantique )
    France, Senegal, Belgium, 2019 (104 mins)
    Directed by Mati Diop

    Cast: Ibrahima Traoré, Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow, Nicole Sougou, Aminata Kane, Mariama Gassama, Coumba Dieng, Ibrahima Mbaye, Diankou Sembene | Assistant Director: Naser Zera’ati | Cinematography: Claire Mathon | Editing: Aël Dallier Vega | Writing: Mati Diop and Olivier Demangel | Music: Fatima Al Qadiri | Produced by: Judith Lou Lévy and Eve Robin | Language: Wolof and French with English subtitles

    Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt — until a miracle reunites them.


    Film-Thinkingis a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to thinkthe many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. This project has been made possible, in part, by the Brown Arts Institute. Read more .