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11:00 am L’Age d’or (dir. Luis Buňuel, 1930, 60 mins.)
L’Age d’Or was a follow up to Buňuel’s collaboration with Salvador Dali: Un Chien Andalou, a groundbreaking surrealist film that opens with a razor slicing the eyeball of a woman. L’Age d’Or details the sexual and social frustrations of a couple prevented from consummating their love by their families, the Church and society. According to Buňuel, Dali wrote that the film was about “the impossible force that thrusts two people together [and] the impossibility of their ever becoming one.” At the opening of the film in Paris in 1930, fascists led a violent protest of the film’s fetishism and blasphemy. Critic Michael Atkinson called L’Age d’Or “subversive culture’s seminal anthem film.” 12:45 pm Kaidan (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964, 125 mins.)
Nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 1965, Kaidan is a collection of four different ghost stories, drawn from Japanese folktales. These quasi-horror stories feature a snow witch, a blind musician and a lovelorn samurai. The Kobayashi, a student of Asian art, explores common ground between traditional Japanese visual arts and cinematic expression. The work is a “visually ravishing film that uses dazzling color palettes and carefully composed widescreen photography to bring the viewer into an entirely supernatural world,” writes critic James Kendrick. Kobayashi painted the expressionistic sets himself, worked out the splashy mood lighting, and, most important, coördinated the visual elements with the innovative music of Toru Takemitsu. The composer rooted his score in such indigenous Japanese sounds as the striking of certain hard stones that–according to one authority–are found only on the

 3:00 pm Blow-Up (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, 111 mins.)
A detached, aimless

London fashion photographer wanders into a park where he photographs what may be a murder. Antonini’s classic thriller was the highest grossing art film of that date, gaining Oscar nominations for screenplay and direction. Blow-Up is a film about illusion, seduction and ennui—a zeitgeist of the swinging sixties—that also toys with the subjectivity of artist, object, and perception.

 If you like this set of films…Attend as much of the Indianapolis International Film Festival as possible. Take time to linger in the Campos-Pons exhibit.  You should know before you go…Read reviews of L’Age d’Or, Kaidan, and Blow-up.  

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Ticket info: http://indyfilmfest.org/tickets.html 

Dare Not Walk Alone documents the gap between Martin Luther King’s generation of civil rights activists and today’s Hip Hoppers. Dare Not Walk Alone reveals the untold history of the civil rights movement in the town of St. Augustine, FL. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his non-violent protesters’ escalating struggle against the racial establishment led to the battle to integrate one motel, culminating in a horrific incident in the motel’s pool in which the proprietor, James Brock, poured acid on a group of wading protesters. Photographs of the incident made front-page news around the world and led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first piece of civil rights legislation. More than 40 years later, several African-American teenagers in

If you like this film … See a couple of movies in the Film festival about the history of race in

For more information after seeing the movie … Information about the civil rights struggle in 1963 and 1964: http://www.crmvet.org/info/staug.htmDavid R. Colburn, Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877-1980  

Indy experts: Rod Bohannan is wise, insightful, and experienced in the struggles for civil rights in

Get involved: The Indianapolis Urban League is always seeking volunteers and members.  

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Ticket info: http://indyfilmfest.org/tickets.html 

Dare Not Walk Alone documents the gap between Martin Luther King’s generation of civil rights activists and today’s Hip Hoppers. Dare Not Walk Alone reveals the untold history of the civil rights movement in the town of St. Augustine, FL. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his non-violent protesters’ escalating struggle against the racial establishment led to the battle to integrate one motel, culminating in a horrific incident in the motel’s pool in which the proprietor, James Brock, poured acid on a group of wading protesters. Photographs of the incident made front-page news around the world and led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first piece of civil rights legislation. More than 40 years later, several African-American teenagers in

If you like this film … See a couple of movies in the Film festival about the history of race in

For more information after seeing the movie … Information about the civil rights struggle in 1963 and 1964: http://www.crmvet.org/info/staug.htmDavid R. Colburn, Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877-1980  

Indy experts: Rod Bohannan is wise, insightful, and experienced in the struggles for civil rights in

Get involved: The Indianapolis Urban League is always seeking volunteers and members.  

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In Spanish, “espada” means sword. Called “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors,” poet Martín Espada draws inspiration from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. His eighth collection of poems, The Republic of Poetry, is forthcoming from Norton in fall 2006. Of this new book, Samuel Hazo writes: “Espada unites in these poems the fierce allegiances of Latin American poetry to freedom . . . with the democratic tradition of Whitman, and the result is poetry of fire and passionate intelligence.” His last book, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, 1982-2002 (Norton, 2003), received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. An earlier collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation, and Best American Poetry. 

If you like this reading…Check out the discussion of the work of Cuban dissident writer Zoë Valdez May 10.  

You should know before you go… Check out Espada’s poetry: http://www.martinespada.net/poems.htm, and read this nice article about Espada, “Poet of Conscience.”

For more information after the reading …Read a more thorough set of reviews and analyses of Espada’s work: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/espada/espada.htm  

Indy experts: Karen Kovacik of IUPUI is more than a great poet and translator … she thinks deeply about how poetry crosses and transcends boundaries and border.  

Get involved: Etheridge Knight Inc promotes the arts and the appreciation of the arts for youth, youth at risk, adults, seniors, the handicapped, and the incarcerated by providing the arts for people of all ages and cultures through various artistic expressions. The organization pays tribute to the arts community and the legacy of the late American poet Etheridge Knight. All volunteer help is welcomed. Including bi-lingual, sign language, artists, all ages, cultures… etc. http://ekfestival.org/

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If you like this talk …You should attend many of the dozens of events scheduled around the city as part of the Year of Vonnegut. See a list at http://yearofvonnegut.org/  

You should know before you go…Read David Hoppe’s touching interview with Vonnegut in February: Kurt Vonnegut: the exit interview, and Vonnegut’s Speech at the Athenaeum, Oct. 10, 1996 

For more informationRead Kurt Vonnegut’s books … again.  

Indy experts: David Hoppe of Nuvo maintained a long and respectful friendship with the great author. I have always thought that David’s reporting exhibited the best of Vonnegut’s voice.  

Get involved: Go to the public library’s site for many, many events: http://www.imcpl.org/events/yearofvonnegut/yovevents.html

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Ambassadors for Children is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to serving children around the world through short-term humanitarian service trips and sustainable projects. Through these programs, AFC will make a significant impact on world peace and understanding through face-to-face cultural exchanges. AFC trips provide hands-on interaction with children in need, balanced by opportunities for sightseeing and immersion in the native culture of the community served. AFC currently supports children in approximately 20 countries around the world. 

If you like this event… Check out “Fraulein” at the Indianapolis International Film Festival, the story of three women from Yugoslavia trying to get by in

You should know before you go…The costs of non-Europe: A look at how Serbia loses from its frosty relationship with the European Union.The Failure of the West’s “Ostrich” Policy: With the Serbs and Albanians unable to reach common ground, it’s now up to the United Nations to determine the future status of Kosovo. It won’t be easy. According to a new study, the international community has failed miserably.History to Order: History teaching in Serbia’s public schools has been repeatedly abused by politics. 

For more information after the event, read Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon; Maria N. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; and Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999 

Indy experts: Francine Friedman of

Get involved: Ambassadors for Children is sending a “humanitarian tourism” group to Serbia in September

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You should know before you go…The Somali Bantu are descendants of six African tribes in East Africa … the Somali Bantu are not native Somalis. Their ancestors were taken from their native lands by Arab slave traders in the 18th and 19th centuries and sold through the

National Somali Bantu Organization (MUKI) Serves Somali immigrants in the United States and Canada.

For more on Somali Bantu history and culture: http://www.cal.org/co/bantu/   Indy experts: Mary Spink of the International Center of Indianapolis has been working closely with the large number of Somali Bantus settled in

You should know before you go…The Somali Bantu are descendants of six African tribes in East Africa … the Somali Bantu are not native Somalis. Their ancestors were taken from their native lands by Arab slave traders in the 18th and 19th centuries and sold through the

National Somali Bantu Organization (MUKI) Serves Somali immigrants in the United States and Canada.

For more on Somali Bantu history and culture: http://www.cal.org/co/bantu/