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January 27: Since Otar Left. Director Julie Bertuccelli.
France, 2003, 102 mins., Color 35mm, 1.85:1, Dolby SRD
In French, Georgian and Russian, with English subtitles
Three Georgian women--strong-willed matriarch Eka (90-year-old former dental assistant and fledgling star Esther Gorintin), her long-suffering daughter Marina (Nino Khomassouridze) and rebellious granddaughter Ada (Freeze, Die, Come to Life's Dinara Droukarova)--all live together in their stately-yet-crumbling apartment in contemporary Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic. Eka pines for her beloved son Otar, a physician who is now a construction worker in Paris. Marina is deeply resentful of her mother's obsession with her absent brother, while Ada endures their bickering and yearns for a more adventurous existence. When a friend of Otar's calls with tragic news, Marina and Ada must make a seemingly impossible choice: Do they keep Eka from learning the truth?
February 3, 2005: A Night of Shorts
Organized by Media Arts Director 
Joanna Raczynska of Hallwalls www.hallwalls.org
Devotion: and discussion with director
Cynthia Madansky. A semi-autobiographical 16mm
film which unravels the complex manifestation,
contradictions, and intersections of devotion in
Istanbul as seen in relation to love, nationalism,
and Islam.
It's not my memory of it: three recollected documents by
Julia Meltzer & David Thorne. It's not my memory of
it is a documentary about secrecy, memory, and
documents. Mobilizing specific historical records as
memories which flash up in moments of danger, the
tape addresses the expansion and intensification
of secrecy practices in the current climate of
heightened security.
a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert by Coco Fusco. An in-
depth examination of racialized imagery, a/k/a
Mrs. George Gilbert is the story of an FBI agent
who confesses his involvement in the nation-wide
search for Angela Davis, the black philosopher who
was fired from UCLA in 1969 at the order of then
governor Ronald Reagan, and in 1970 was placed on
the FBI's “Ten Most Wanted List," after which
she went underground.
February 10: Moolaade. Director Ousmane Sembene.
Senegal, 2004, 124 mins, Color 35mm, 1.66, Dolby SR
In Jula and English, with English Subtitles (feature)
The action is set in a  small African
village, where four young girls facing ritual “purification” flee to the household of Collé Ardo Gallo Sy, a strong-willed woman who has managed to shield her own teenage daughter from genital mutilation. Collé invokes the time-honored custom of moolaadé (sanctuary) to protect the fugitives, and tension mounts as the ensuing stand-of pits Collé against village traditionalists (both male and female) and endangers the prospective marriage of her daughter to the heir-apparent to the tribal throne.
Though the su
bject matter might seem weighty, this buoyant film is anything but – Sembene places the action amid a colorful, vibrant tapestry of village life, and expands the narrative well beyond the bounds of straightforward, socially conscious realism employing an imaginative array of emblematic metaphors, mythic overtones, and music.
 Winner of the Grand Prize in the Un Certain Regard Section of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Moolaadé was selected by many prominent critics as the best film of the entire festival.
Introduced by Dr. Francoise Pfaff, Professor of French in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at Howard University. Dr. Pfaff is one of the leading scholars on Sub-Saharan African film. Among her latest publications is an edited work titled Focus on African Films.
Related Lecture: Also, on Thursday, February 10, don't miss Francoise Pfaff's lecture on "Women in African Film." 119 Clemens Hall, North Campus, University at Buffalo. 3pm. Free and open to the public.
Lecture sponsored by the Department of African American Studies and the Office of the Dean - College of Arts & Sciences.
February 17: Divan. Director Pearl Gluck. 
Divan Pearl Gluck.
Visit with the director in person! Photo: Pat Shelly, Pearl Gluck, and Andrea Spain on the Buffalo Divan at BETTY's on Virginia St.
USA/Hungary/Ukraine/Israel, 2003, 77mins, Color 35mm
In Hungarian, Yiddish and English, with English Subtitles (documentary)
 As a teenager, filmmaker Pearl Gluck and her mother left their Orthodox Jewish clan in Brooklyn for secular life in Manhattan after her parents’ divorce. Many years later, Pearl’s father has one wish: that she marry and return to the community. Pearl, however, takes a more creative approach to mend the breach. She travels to Hungary to retrieve a turn-of-the-century family heirloom: a couch upon which esteemed rabbis once slept. En route for the ancestral divan, Pearl encounters a colorful cast of characters who provide guidance and inspiration, including a couch exporter, her ex-Communist cousin in Budapest, a pair of Hungarian-American matchmakers and a renegade group of formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews. Nimbly clever and intensely illuminating, DIVAN is a visual parable that offers the possibility of personal reinvention and cultural re-upholstery.
Introduced by Isabel Marcus, School of Law, University at Buffalo
February 24: Silent Waters / Khamosh Pani. Director Sabiha Sumar
Pakistan, 2003, 95 mins, Color, 35mm, 1:1,85, Dolby Stereo SRD. In Punjabi with English subtitles (feature)
 A Pakistani documentary filmmaker based in Germany, Sabiha Sumar sets her first fiction feature in a rural Pakistan village in 1979, when the newly formed military government of General Zia allowed the country to swing towards Islamic fundamentalism. Ayesha, a progressive thinking Muslim widow, lives with her adored teenage son, Saleem. The two of them get by on the money Ayesha earns as a seamstress and teaching the Koran to children. Saleem and Zubeida, a neighbor’s daughter, are in love, but Zubeida is determined to go away to college and have a career. All Saleem knows is that he doesn’t want to be a farmer. At loose ends, he easily falls under the sway of the Islamic extremists who come to town to recruit young men for Jihad. It’s not the first time the village has been terrorized by religious extremists. For Ayesha, it is as if she is being forced to relive the horror of the 1947 partitioning of India and Pakistan – a horror that, as the film reveals, continues to reverberate today. Working with non-professional actors, Sumar fills the film with multidimensional, psychologically nuanced characters. “Silent Waters” is a passionate feminist tragedy. (Amy Taubin)
Golden and Bronze Leopards – Locarno International Film Festival 2003; Silver Montgolfiere and Audience Award – Nantes Three Continents Festival 2003
Introduced by Ramya Sreenivasan, Dept. of History, University at Buffalo
March 3: 20 Fingers/Beest Angosht. Director Mania Akbari
 Iran, 2004, 72 min. 35mm Color. In Farsi with English subtitles (feature).
20 FINGERS explores gender relations and the way men and women in Iran interact within the confines of their own expectations and societies’ rules. A man and a woman (played by director/writer Akbari and producer Bijan Daneshmand), portray seven different couples in each of seven scenarios. As they travel in various vehicles along a rather pot-holed journey, seven battles between partners -- over such universal themes as jealousy, mutual trust and the acceptance of each other’s right to certain freedoms -- shed light on the struggle between the strict traditions of the past and Iranian women’s desire for a new equality. Particularly eye-opening are the sequences dealing with the Doctor’s certificate necessary to confirm the virginity of a woman prior to marriage, the Disciplinary Forces - a government body that supervises the behavior and morality of the public - arresting a couple for adultery, and scenes on abortion and lesbianism in Iran.
Mania Akbari has starred as an actor in many films, and has directed various documentaries before 20 FINGERS, her first feature.
Introduced by Behjat Henderson, Gender Institute
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