African film screenings open to UST community

UST English professor Dr. Carmela Garritano invites members of the St. Thomas community to join her students in the ENGL 337 African Film: Theory and Practice class for film screenings on seven Mondays this spring.

The screenings, listed below, will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. in Room 126 (auditorium), John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts.

The first film, “Ezra” (Nigeria, France, Austria, 2007), will be shown Feb. 22. It is the first film to give an African perspective on the disturbing phenomenon of abducting child soldiers into the continent’s recent civil wars. The film is structured around the weeklong questioning of a 16-year-old boy, Ezra, before a version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions created in Sierra Leone in 2002 in the wake of its decadelong civil war.

“Viewing films and videos as they were originally intended to be viewed – in a shared public space and on a large screen with good sound – is crucial to our understanding of the viewing experience and to our ability to see the wealth of detail available in the original mise-en-scène” (an excerpt from Garritano’s course description).

Find more information on the film here.

Schedule of spring film screenings:

  • Monday, March 1, “Long Night’s Journey into Day” (South Africa, 2000)
  • Monday, March 15, “Tales of Ordinary People,” two short films: “Le Franc” and “La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil” (“The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun”) (Senegal, 1994, 1999)
  • Monday, April 12, “Bamako” (Mali, 2006)
  • Monday, April 19, “These Hands” (Tanzania, 1992) and “Africa, Africas” (Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, 2001)
  • Monday, April 26, “Al’leessi: An African Actress” (Niger, 2004)
  • Monday, May 3, “Aristotle’s Plot” (Zimbabwe, 1997)

For more information, contact Garritano, (651) 962-5607.