Events
Past Events › Talks
January 2019
Point of No Return
Soaring at 28,000 feet without a drop of fuel, nothing is predictable: not the weather, not the technology, and certainly not the fate of a man, alone for five days in a fragile, first-of-its-kind aircraft with nothing but ocean below. Point of No Return takes you behind the headlines of the first solar-powered flight around the world, where two courageous pilots take turns battling nature, their own crew, and sometimes logic itself, to achieve the impossible. Their aim is not…
Find out more »February 2019
Script to Screen: The Favourite
Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite (2018) is set in the early eighteenth century. England is at war with France, but duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving nevertheless. A frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne. Her close friend Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When Abigail Masham (Emma Stone) is hired as a new servant, her charm endears her to Sarah. Sarah takes Abigail under…
Find out more »The Raw and the Husky: Music Vocal Qualia and Gender Politics in Post-Millennium Tamil Cinema
Amanda Weidman, Bryn Mawr College Wednesday, February 6, 2019 | 3:30-4:45 pm | Music Room 1145 This talk will examine the reorganization of singing voices and vocal aesthetics in the music of Tamil cinema, contrasting the ideals for male and female voices from the 1960s and 70s with new ideals that have emerged since the 1990s, in the wake of Itndia’s economic and cultural liberalization. Based on ethnographic research among playback singers, music directors, and sound engineers in the Tamil…
Find out more »Script to Screen: A Quiet Place
The year is 2020 and most of Earth’s human and animal population has been wiped out by sightless creatures of unknown origin. Directed by John Krasinski, A Quiet Place (2018) explores one family’s struggle to survive in a desolate New York City in an era of complete and utter silence. As Earth’s newest invader is attracted to noise, even the slightest of sounds can be deadly. We are delighted to welcome Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (screenwriters/ executive producers) for the 50th installment of Script to Screen,…
Find out more »Beatles Revolutions: I Wanna Hold Your Hand
Set against the backdrop of Beatlemania, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) centers on the comical quest of six New Jersey teens to see the Beatles at their 1964 performance on the set of the The Ed Sullivan Show. Robert Zemeckis’ directorial debut imagines the power of a musical phenomenon to shape a cultural moment. One of the first collaborations between writers Zemeckis and Bob Gale and producer Steven Spielberg, I Wanna Hold Your Hand is the story of fans whose…
Find out more »Cultural Industries and Digital Platforms: Global Music and Television
With the international growth of digital networks in the early 21st century, many commentators predicted a more democratic future for cultural production and consumption. This talk investigates the accuracy of such predictions, mainly focusing on the case of music but also commenting on developments in television. The increasing power of streaming services as gatekeepers to music and television content brings with it the increasing penetration of giant tech corporations and start-ups into the realm of music and television, with business…
Find out more »The Lady Eve
Preston Sturges’ daring and sexy romantic comedy The Lady Eve (1941) opens as a naturalist (Henry Fonda) emerges from the jungle after a year up the Amazon studying snakes. On board a ship, he is targeted by a female cardsharp (Barbara Stanwyck). When the two begin to fall in love, complications arise for both the con woman and the mark. Widely lauded as one of the best screwball films of all time, this film was a favorite of both Stanwyck…
Find out more »The Milan Protocol (Das Milan-Protokoll)
In Peter Ott’s 2017 film The Milan Protocol (Das Milan-Protokoll), Martina (Catrin Striebeck), a German doctor working and living in Iraqi Kurdistan, is kidnapped while traveling through ISIS-controlled territory in Syria. When news of her capture breaks, a range of global players try to take advantage of the hostage situation, including intelligence agencies in Germany, Turkey, and Iraq. Unsure of whom to trust, Martina starts to lose her ability to distinguish friend from foe. Director Peter Ott will join moderator…
Find out more »Upstream
Upstream (1927) strays far from director John Ford’s classic Western landscapes. Centered on an eclectic mix of stage actors, knife-throwers, and vaudevillians, Upstream is a backstage comedy set in a busy New York boardinghouse. Tensions arise after a member of the household, a pretentious thespian named Eric Brashingham (Earle Fox), is summoned to London to perform Hamlet. Upon his return, he meets with rejection from his former friends. Less than twenty percent of Ford’s silents survive, and for decades Upstream…
Find out more »Across the Universe
With the hallucinatory visual style of Revolver, the poppy sentiment of A Hard Day’s Night, and a songbook that spans the Beatles’ discography, Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe (2007) reimagines the Beatles music as the soundscape for art, revolution, and love in the 1960s. British dockworker Jude (Jim Sturgess) travels from Liverpool to the US in search of his father, but ends up falling in love with a young upper-class American, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). The film pays tribute to…
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