2021 > Croatia/Brazil/US/Slovenia > Directed by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic
With Gracija Filipovic, Danica Curcic, Leon Luce, Cliff Curtis
In this "sunshine noir" (Variety), a 17-year-old girl spends her days diving for eels with her overbearing father off Croatia's Adriatic coast, envying the tourists sunning nearby. Then a rich, handsome, mysterious stranger appears with an offer to buy their land. "Beautiful scenery, nuanced performances, and canny filmmaking provide one of the most memorable coming-of-age stories of the 2020s so far." (Film Threat) Winner of Cannes' Camera d'Or. Subtitled. More at www.kinolorber.com/film/view/id/5305
1 hr 36 min

2021 > Thailand/Colombia > Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
With Tilda Swinton, Elkin D’az, Jeanne Balibar
Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and following a unique roadshow distribution model that supposedly will never make the film available via online streaming, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's latest film stars Tilda Swinton as a woman suffering from sudden loud, mysterious sounds that only she can hear. Haunted by the noise, she seeks out answers, ultimately leading her to the interior of the lush Colombian jungle, and to a place where past, present, and future coexist. Subtitled. More at neonrated.com/films/memoria
2 hrs 16 min

2021 > India, France > Directed by Payal Kapadia
With Bhumisuta Das
Through a series of fictional letters between two anonymous lovers, a whirlwind of fantasy, reality, dream, memory and feeling emerges, as Indian students take to the streets to protest the right-wing government and widespread injustice. A Night of Knowing Nothing is both a love letter to cinema, and an alarming wake-up call, all at once. Subtitled. More at www.cinemaguild.com/theatrical/anightofknowingnothing.html
1 hr 37 min

2021 > Japan > Directed by Masaaki Yuasa
With Avu-chan, Mirai Moriyama, Kenjir™ Tsuda, Yutaka Matsushige
A musical fantasy about a pair of 14th century rockstars in feudal Japan. Psychedelic colors, painterly art styles and a head-banging soundtrack make this story of two cursed artists against the world an absolute must-see for anime fans everywhere. Subtitled. More at gkids.com/films/inu-oh
1 hr 38 min

Scholars from Ghana, South Africa, Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Canada and the U.S. will present research on labor market inequality for global migrants in the Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific regions.

Invited Conference to be held at the ILR Conference Center on Thursday October 6th (afternoon) and Friday October 7th (all day). Attendees are welcome, please register here.

On November 3 scholar and singer-songwriter Psoy Korolenko will present a lecture-concert that combines discussion of Jewish musical tradition in cross-cultural context of the 19-21st centuries and artistic performance.

Pavel Lion, PhD in Philology, MSU, more known by his art name Psoy Korolenko, is a singer-songwriter, translator, scholar, and journalist, often referred to as a ''wandering scholar'' and an ''avant-bard''. His multilingual one-person cabaret balances various genres and traditions, among which East European music, Klezmer, and Yiddish play a significant role. On stage since 2000, he released several books of essays, poetry, and song lyrics, and more than 20 CDs, solo or in collaboration with active Jewish and Klezmer musicians ("Opa!", Daniel Kahn, Igor Krutogolov, "Oy Division", Michael Alpert, Bob Cohen, Jake Shulmann-Ment). Featured in movies "Soul Exodus" (Hungary), "The Wandering Muse" (Canada), several Russian films (sometimes in cameo episodes). He has been a part of various international music projects, such as “Brothers Nazaroff'' (Smithsonian Folkways Records, 2015), ''Defesa'' (2015, tribute to Brazilian Tropicalists) and other. In 2020, ''Psoetry'' was published, a bilingual selection of Psoy's original Russian songs in English translations by other authors, and songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Daniel Kahn and other artists, translated into Russian by Psoy.

One of his most recent achievements is his participation in ''Yiddish Glory'', a long-term collaborative project with the historian Anna Shternshis, professor of Toronto University. Yiddish Glory is an academic and artistic exploration of long-lost and recently discovered trove of Yiddish songs in Yiddish created and performed by a group of amateur singers and musicians from Ukraine evacuated to Middle Asia at the time of WWII. The album "Yiddish Glory" (2019) won “The Fiddler on the Roof” award from the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia and had been nominated for a Grammy award. Psoy is a voting member of the American Recording Academy, one of the organizers or the Russian American open-air music festival JetLAG, and participant of multiple klezmer music festivals. He had been artist/scholar-in-residence at the Trinity College (Hartford), University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA), and he currently is a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth College.

Event sponsored by Jewish Studies Program, Department of Comparative Literature/Russian Program, Institute for European Studies, and Department of Music

The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.

Bio:
Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the body in performance, using video, photography, installation, public interventions, and sculpture. He holds an M.F.A. in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.F.A. in Film from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. As a queer, Latinx immigrant with Indigenous heritage, it is essential to his practice to engage in the postcolonial ethical imperative to uncover, investigate, and make visible and audible undervalued or disparaged sites of knowledge, narratives, and individuals. He utilizes his body in a political and critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration, and poetics of space. His research-based practice is heavily influenced by queer and feminist archives, border politics, botanical colonialism, and defaced monuments. Besides his artistic practice, he is also a translator, community activist, yoga teacher, and anti-oppression facilitator with queer, migrant, and refugee youth.

His work has been exhibited in exhibitions and festivals in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Japan, Austria, England, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Colombia, and Australia, as well as institutions such as The Art Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Ex-Teresa Arte Actual Museum and Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Surrey Art Gallery, The DePaul Art Museum, and The Botin Foundation. From 2019-2022 Rojas was a Visiting Artist in Residency in the Theater and Performance Department at Bard College in New York. He is also currently visiting faculty in the M.F.A. programs at Parsons the New School and the low-res M.F.A. programs at PNCA in Portland, Oregon, and University of the Arts, in Philadelphia.

Abstract:
GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM! is a lecture/performance by artist Emilio Rojas, departing from this xenophobic phrase to trace histories of colonialism, the open wounds of borders, and the emptiness of monuments. This embodied lecture considers his practice in relation to decolonization, de-linking, archives, queerness, and contaminations into public space. It is not an attempt to re-write history but rather to view it from a different orientation, in a non-linear way which opens spaces of liminality and possibility, remembrance and healing. It urges us to ask ourselves: How are we complicit with the past we inherited? How are we accomplices of the history of what we consume in the present?

Emilio Rojas is the fall 2022 Teiger Mentor in the Arts.

Please join us for a lunchtime seminar given by our guest Tawab Danish, a Visiting Scholar here at Cornell Law School.

SEMINAR: Circling Back to Zero after 20 years of Achievements: How the Legal System of Afghanistan has Been Affected More than Any Other Institution under the Taliban Regime

DATE: Tuesday, October 25th, 2022

TIME: 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET

LOCATION: Room 277 – Myron Taylor Hall, Cornell Law School

***Lunch will be provided during the event, so don’t forget to RSVP!

RSVP here

Please fill out the following short form: https://cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5A8vFJEaEmFjiQu

The Seminar – Circling Back to Zero after 20 years of Achievements: How the Legal System of Afghanistan has Been Affected More than Any Other Institution under the Taliban Regime

After 2001, the international community, the United States of America, and the leader of Afghanistan spent billions of dollars and put much effort into rebuilding the legal system in Afghanistan. However, since the Taliban received power on August 15, 2021, the legal system has gone backwards to where it was 20 years ago. The Taliban abolished the Constitution ratified in 2004, and dissolved the National Assembly and some independent legal institutions such as the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association and Afghanistan Independent Human Right Commission. Simultaneously, the criminal code, civil code, criminal procedure, human rights law, and women and children's rights are unclear. The Taliban leads the country most dominantly by decrees of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Their administration believes that the 2004 Constitution does not hold up to sharia law, although the First, Second, and Third Articles of the Constitution were mainly about Islamic values and accepted Islam as the official state religion.

Continuation of the current situation in Afghanistan will have extreme effects on the whole legal system and will lead the country to absolute tyranny. So, the international community – especially the United Nations, United States of America, and regional and Islamic countries – should take proper measures to pressurize the Taliban to keep alive and promote the legal system.

About our Distinguished Guest: Tawab Danish

Tawab Danish, a visiting scholar at the Cornell School of Law, was born in the Bagram district of Parwan, Afghanistan in 1985. He graduated from the Law & Political Science School of Albironi University in Kapisa, Afghanistan in 2006 and holds an LLM degree from the University of Washington School of Law.

Tawab Danish was appointed as a lecturer at Parwan University in 2013 and taught Constitutional Law, Public International Law, Human Rights, and International Organizations. He also has worked as a senior advisor of the Speaker of the House of the National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2019 to 2021.

Mr. Danish founded a private school in 2013, which is one of the most well-known schools in Parwan Province. More than 700 students are enrolled in his school, 28% of which are girls.

Can’t make it to our event in-person? You can attend virtually!

We are also livestreaming the event, so you can sign up to attend the Zoom Webinar at this link: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hazaK_ekTnCSPKB2lVO8mQ

Please feel free to distribute the link to anyone you feel would be interested in the seminar. All are welcome!