February 12

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Dir. Cristian Mungiu, 2007. (Running Time: 113 min.)
*Sexuality Week Event
Special Location and Time: Campus Center 375, 4 pm.

Launching our film series, "Danger Zones: Mapping Women's Lives," is the critically acclaimed feature film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, included in the events for Sexuality Week. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, Cristian Mungiu's film, the first in a planned trilogy of Romania's "Golden Years" behind the Iron Curtain, explores the dark and repressive days of 1987 Romania as college student Otilia assists her friend Gabita in arranging an illegal abortion.

Discussion will be led by Janell Hobson and Vivien Ng, Department of Women's Studies, and Kelly J. Horner, Director of the Sexual Assault Resource Center.

February 26

Rape for Who I Am
Dir. Lovinsa Kavuma, 2005. (Running Time: 28 min.)

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
Dir. Lisa F. Jackson, 2007. (Running Time: 76 min.)

These two harrowing and explicit documentaries give voice to the subject of rape and, more importantly, allow African women to tell their stories of survival.

The first, a documentary short by Ugandan-born British filmmaker Lovinsa Kavuma, highlights the lives of lesbians in South Africa, who brave hate crimes and protest being targets of rape, to live their lives out in the open.

The second, a documentary feature by American filmmaker Lisa J. Jackson, puts a transnational spotlight on the travesties occurring in war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, which has the worst rape epidemic in the world and where the violence continues today. Jackson, who survived a gang rape in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., makes a personal connection between the violence she experiences in a First World context and the sexual violence women in the Congo experience during war time.

A truly 21st-century war, fueled by our high-tech industry that relies on utter chaos - including the rampant rape of women and children and other human rights violations - to allow for lucrative global markets (the Congo region is home to raw materials like coltane, used in our lap tops and cell phones), Jackson's film connects the personal with the political and the global.

Screened together, these two films - exploring stories of rape and resistance - showcase the immediate "danger zones" of women's lives and draw us closer to understanding the ties between the "local" and the "global," between women's lives "over here" and "over there."

Discussion will be led TBA.

March 5

Persepolis
Dir. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, 2007. (Running Time: 96 min.)

Based on the celebrated autobiographical graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, this animation feature presents the coming-of-age story of young Marjane, beginning with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and continuing through the Iran-Iraq War, her exile in Europe, and her return to post-War Iran.

Discussion will be led TBA.

March 12

Bordertown
Dir. Gregory Nava, 2006. (Running Time: 112 min.)

Starring Jennifer Lopez and Antonia Banderas, this underrated feature film explores the tragedies behind the Juarez femicide, occurring on the U.S./Mexico border - where hundreds, if not thousands, of young women and girls have been murdered and/or have gone missing. Told from the perspective of a survivor - a young indigenous Mexican woman, who works in the U.S.-owned maquiladoras, assembly plants where many young girls who are targeted for violence are employed - and the Chicana journalist who helps to tell her story.

Discussion will be led TBA.

March 19

Finding Dawn
Dir. Christine Welsh, 2006. (Running Time: 73 min.)

Exploring a different location on a different border is this documentary feature from Canadian filmmaker Christine Welsh, who highlights the more than 500 Aboriginal women who went missing or were murdered along the "Highway of Tears," in northern British Columbia, while telling the story of three such women - Dawn Crey, Ramona Wilson, and Daleen Kay Bosse - and revealing the historical, social, and economic forces behind violence against Native women.

Discussion will be led TBA.

March 26

Comrades: Almost a Love Story
Dir. Peter Chan, 1996. (Running Time: 118 min.)

Peter Chan's film, starring Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai, follows the journeys, struggles, and friendship-turned-romance of two Chinese mainlanders who migrate to Hong Kong for work opportunities then, later, to New York City. The film premiered at a time when Hong Kong was about to be turned over to China.

Discussion will be led TBA.