By Brock Donaldson
Lamp staff
SPRINGFIELD – Many Americans take for granted that the whole world is just like it is in this country. They are blind to the conditions that many countries and cultures around the world are in.
For that reason, a group of Lincoln Land Community College professors have put together a film series to expose people to the world beyond Springfield.
The “Through a Different Lens” film series is “designed to expose our learning community to different ways of learning, of behaving, of knowing and interacting with one another,” said Joseph Hoff, professor of Spanish and one of the series’ organizers.
The first three films were from Latin America and meant to portray the way freedom is imagined in cultures where freedom has been limited or denied.
“Each film was selected to offer us a different lens which we might consider different facets of the human journey,” Hoff said.
The first three films were “Fresa y Chocolate,” “Who is Dayani Cristal?” and “¡No!”
The free series is held from 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursdays in the Trutter Center. Each film is introduced by a guest speaker, giving the film’s context.
The Trutter Museum will be open, with culturally relevant artifacts from the Trutter collection on display in the reception area
Organized by the Arts and Humanities Department, the other organizers are Ashley Green, assistant professor of English, and Paul Van Heuklom, professor of English.
The upcoming films are:
Nov. 10: “To Live” (1994) The film follows the life of one family in China, from the heady days of gambling dens in the 1940s to the austere hardship of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. And through all of their fierce struggles with fate, all of the political twists and turns they endure, their hope is basically summed up by the heroine, a wife who loses wealth and position and children, and who says, “All I ask is a quiet life together.”
Nov. 17: “Still Walking” (2009) Twelve years after their beloved eldest son, Junpei, drowned while saving a stranger’s life, the parents welcome their surviving children home for a family reunion. The younger son still feels that his parents resent that he isn’t the one who died, as his wife is awkwardly introduced to the rest of the family for the first time.
Dec. 8: “Birth of a Family” (2012) Soo-Jung begins work at a home shopping channel network. She is a bright and warm-hearted woman. Her life changes when her father suddenly dies in a fire. Now, she has to learn how to take care of her family: her mother and her troublemaker younger brother Soo-Ho.
Brock Donaldson can be reached at [email protected].
