Each film in our spring series explores a sense of place. 

JANUARY 23, 24, 25

MEAN STREETS

Directed by Martin Scorsese, 1976, USA, 109 m.
Echoing elements from his own life, Scorsese's breakthrough film follow the lives of two low-life gangsters (Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel) in New York's Little Italy.  

Monday Speaker: John Paul Spiro
 

JANUARY 30, 31, FEBRUARY 1  

THE NEW YEAR PARADE

Directed by Tom Quinn, 2008, USA, 85 m.
Set against the backdrop of the Mummer's Parade, this film about a family in crisis is "entrenched in the culture and multi-generation working class Irish community of South Philadelphia."  
Monday Speaker: Tom Quinn, the filmmaker 

FEBRUARY 6, 7, 8

PERSEPOLIS

Directed by Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, 2007, France/USA, 96 m.
Based on Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novels, this animated film is a coming-of-age tale centering on a precocious Iranian girl during the Islamic revolution and its aftermath.  
Monday Speaker: Nasser Chour
 

FEBRUARY 13, 14, 15

WAR DANCE

Directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix, 2007, USA,  105 m.
In this inspirational Oscar-winning documentary, the focus is on three children living in a displacement camp in northern Uganda, who compete in their country's national music and dance festival.  
Monday Speaker: Hezekiah Lewis
 

FEBRUARY 20, 21, 22 

SINCE OTAR LEFT 

Directed by Julie Bertucelli, 2003, France, Danièle Thompson, 2006, France, 103 m.  
The ghost of Soviet rule haunts the lives of a fractured Georgian family when Otar -- beloved son, brother, and uncle -- emigrates to Paris.  
Monday Speaker: Gustavo Benavides

SPRING BREAK

MARCH 13, 14, 15 

KATYN 

Directed by Andrzej Vajda, 2007, Poland, 121 m.  
This Academy Award nominee examines the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Poles, including the filmmaker's father, in Poland's Katyn forest in 1940.  
Monday Speaker: Boris Briker

MARCH 20, 21, 22 

BIRDY

Directed by Alan Parker, 1984, USA, 120 m.

In this film, based on the novel by local author William Wharton, two Vietnam vets -- one with physical injuries and the other emotionally scarred -- return to their homes in Philadelphia. 
Monday Speaker: To Be Announced
 

MARCH 27, 28, 29 

RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN

Directed by John Sayles, 1980, USA, 110 m.

Sayles,  who attended college in Massachusetts, set his first feature in New England.  This homegrown film, considered a realistic forerunner to The Big Chill, portrays a group of college friends who gather , for a reunion and reminisce about their days as student activists.  
Monday Speaker: Paul Wilson
 

EASTER BREAK

APRIL 10, 11, 12 

I VITELLONI

Directed by Federico Fellini, 1953, Italy/France, 104 m.

Fellini drew on his youth for this film, which takes a comic and unsentimental look at five boyhood friends, by setting it in his home town on the Adriatic.  Although the men are pushing 30, they're stuck in adolescence, afflicted with wanderlust,  and muddling through life.  
Monday Speaker: Rick Worland
 

APRIL 17, 18, 19   

THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS  

Directed by François Truffaut, 1959, France, 99 m. 
Acclaimed around the world when it was first released, Truffaut's debut feature centers on a troubled adolescent, and it draws a lot from the filmmaker's own delinquent past.   

Monday Speakers: Joe Ansolabehere