Social justice and master poets hit the screen

Margaret Meade Film Festival
Cramer Hall Room 53 at 7 p.m. – Free
503-725-4938 for more information

Go ask anyone, you need cultural awareness in your life. So make a date for some free educational entertainment, Saturday May 11 and 18 for the final two installations of the Margaret Mead Traveling Film and Video Festival at PSU. The late Mead helped bring insightful images of many world cultures to thousands of people. Each year the festival hosts films produced by many different filmmakers.

This Saturday’s films, “Scenes of Resistance” by Alejandro Navarro Smith, and “The Making Of the Revolution” by Katarin Rejger and Eroc van den Broek both deal with people’s uprisings for social justice.

“Resistance” is about Mexican Zapatista villagers who struggle to maintain self-sufficiency, even in the wake of their freedom.

“Revolution” looks at the last two weeks of Slobodan Milosevic’s reign in the former Yugoslavia as seen from the perspective of the Serbian youth opposition group OTPOR.

Next Saturday the festival presents two films about Indonesian poet Ibrahim Kadir. “A Poet Garin” is about Ibrahim Kadir, a traditional poet from the village of Takengon. Kadir was accused of being a Communist and imprisoned for 22 days in 1965. The film uses the form of the Ceh, combining oral tradition of Aceh with dramatic monologue as Kadir plays himself.

“The Poet of Linge Homeland” is also about master poet Kadir and the art form of didong poetry, which is used as the film’s dramatic form. The film was banned in Indonesia for eight months.

Each evening will be introduced by a speaker with a background in the areas represented by the films, and discussion will follow the screenings.

The films will show in Room 53 of Cramer Hall. Doors open at 6:45 p.m. and programs begin at 7. All films are free and open to anyone. Call 503-725-4938 for more information.