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Einaudi Center for International Studies

Collaborative Reforestation in Malawi Supports Ag, Climate Adaptation

A Cornell student plants a tree next to collaborators standing nearby.
January 28, 2025

Rachel Bezner Kerr, IAD

Malawi is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to extreme weather, and climate change is exacerbating droughts, floods, cyclones and other natural disasters throughout the country. To help impoverished farming communities alleviate some of these impacts, Cornell researchers are collaborating with a network of academics, nongovernmental colleagues and communities in Malawi to strengthen forests.

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LACS and LSP Graduate Student Writing Group

April 30, 2025

5:00 pm

Big Red Barn

Join graduate student writers to share goals and write in community. The writing workshop will begin with group introductions and a moment to share what we're working on. The bulk of the time will then be dedicated to writing in community and end with the opportunity to share what you accomplished with a supportive group of peers. For those who can't make it at 5 pm, feel free to drop in at any point.

This writing group, while open to all graduate and professional students, aims to make a place for multilingual writers in particular.

To sign up for weekly reminder emails, please fill out this form.

Sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program and Latina/o Studies Program.

All Welcome!

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Einaudi Center for International Studies

Latin American and Caribbean Studies

All We Imagine as Light

February 7, 2025

7:00 pm

Willard Straight Hall Theatre

The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated by writer/director Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut.

Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital -- head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Divya Prabha) --plus their coworker, cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Kapadia's film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is courted by a doctor at her hospital; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her strict Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment. Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside village with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actresses and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence.

All We Imagine as Light is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.

Part of our "New Visions, New Voices" series. Courtesy of Variance Films. In Malayalam, Hindi, with English subtitles.

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Einaudi Center for International Studies

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

February 1, 2025

8:30 pm

Willard Straight Hall Theatre

Sasha is a young vampire with a very serious problem: she's too sensitive to kill! Frustrated by their daughter's empathy for humans, Sasha's parents decide to cut off her blood supply to force her to learn how to huntÉ or starve! Just as she decides to reject her vampire instincts and embrace a final death, she meets a lonely teenager named Paul who is willing to give his life to save hers, on the condition that she help to fulfill his final wishes before day breaks.

Part of our "Nosferatu Afterlives" series. Courtesy of Drafthouse Films. In French with English subtitles.

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Einaudi Center for International Studies

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

February 1, 2025

5:30 pm

Willard Straight Hall Theatre

Widely considered the most important film in the history of Ukranian cinema, Sergei Parajanov's Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors is a masterwork that boldly combines folkloric pageantry, fairy tale mysticism, and frenetic, hallucinatory cinematography.

Adapted from Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky's novel, Shadows tells the story of Ivan (Ivan Mykolaichuk), a young Hutsul peasant who witnesses his father's murder by the local miser. Years later, Ivan falls in love with the miser's daughter, Marichka (Larisa Kadochnikova), but her shocking death leaves him wallowing in grief until he meets Palahna (Tatyana Bestayeva), a beautiful woman who seems to restore his faith in life and hope for the future. When the ghost of Marichka begins to haunt Ivan, however, Palahna is driven into the arms of the local sorcerer (Spartak Bagashvili), with tragic results.

Shadows is steeped in the earthy atmosphere of the Carpathian mountains; filmed by Parajanov and cinematographer Yuri Ilyenko with an eye for constantly innovative camera movements and vivid color; and suffused by Hutsul culture in the form of composer Myroslav Skoryk's collage-like score, which brings together Ukrainian folk melodies with modernist, experimental orchestration. It is one of cinema's singular productions, capturing the spiritual majesty of the past by creatively forging the medium's future.

The film screens in 4K restoration by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in collaboration with the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre and in association with the Dovzhenko Film Studio. Special thanks to Daniel Bird and _ukasz Ceranka. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Part of our "Restorations & Rediscoveries" series. Courtesy of Janus Films. In Ukrainian with English subtitles.

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Einaudi Center for International Studies

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