Get the ground back under your feet with some faith and reason, 
March 9, 2007

Bill Moyers film series
“Faith and Reason”
Mon, Mar 12, noon
Teatro Santa Ana, Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos

Bill Moyers’ seven-part series on “Faith and Reason”, hailed by both literary and TV critics as the best TV of its kind, screens at the Teatro Santa Ana.

These programs, consisting of interviews with some of the world’s best writers and thinkers, are not designed for theologians or high-powered intellectual specialists of one kind or another, but for any thinking person who in one way or another has asked himself or herself “What’s it all about, Alfie?” It addresses the eternal questions “what is the meaning of our world?”, “what is or what should be our role in it?,” and indeed, “the meaning of meaning.”

It’s Bill Moyers at his best.

The programs are sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel and proceeds go to university scholarships provided by Jóvenes Adelante. The monies from this program are specifically earmarked for the newly established Charlotte Golden Memorial Fund of Jóvenes.

From March 12 until April 26 the schedule runs as follows: Salman Rushdie; Ann Provoost and David Grossman; Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis; Richard Rodriguez and Sir John Houghton; Mary Gordon and Colin McGinn; Jeanette Winterson and Will Power; Pema Chodron.

These one-hour programs are followed by small group discussions of the issues raised in the interviews, led by facilitators—not lecturers. 

For further information, call Sandy Brooks at 152-2580, Cliff Durand at 155-8014, Joe Ershun at 152-2380 or Reverend Farley Wheelwright at 152-1861.

Creative disobedience—honoring activist women

Bioneers winter film series
Frances Moore Lappe & Anne Lappe film
Diane Wilson film
Tues, Mar 13, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
50 pesos

This week’s Bioneers films continue to honor International Women’s Day by featuring well-known women activists—Frances Moore Lappe, Anna Lappe and Diane Wilson. Author and activist Frances Moore Lappe is well-known for her highly influential 1971 best seller, Diet for a Small Planet. This was a landmark book that helped usher in an era of ecological awareness. Since then, Lappe has raised her children and continued to write, or co-write, 14 more books, including her latest, Democracy’s Edge. In this same film, Anna Lappe, has joined her mother in a tour of several Latin American countries, where they stayed with various grassroots communities. 

The second film features activist Diane Wilson. Mother of five and a fourth generation shrimper in Port Lavaca, Texas, Diane creates her own brand of civil disobedience to fight corporate chemical giants. She first became an activist when she observed Formosa Chemicals dumping in Port Lavaca bay. It took her ten years of dogged persistence, but she finally won a “zero discharge” victory in 1995.

She continues her “creative disobedience” with the anti-war group, Code Pink. Wilson’s colorful story is one of down-home heroism—pluck, grit, and sass—that makes a clear case of “they made the wrong woman mad.”

Progressive change and selling an empire

Global Justice Snowbird Symposium films
You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Mon, Mar12, 3pm
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire
Thurs, Mar 15, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
50 pesos

The Center for Global Justice Snowbird Symposium films look at the life and times of historian/activist/ author Howard Zinn and how a radical fringe group of the Republican Party used the trauma of 9/11 to drastically transform American foreign policy and roll back civil rights and social programs at home.

You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train captures the essence of Zinn, the activist and thinker who has been a catalyst for progressive change for more than 60 years. The film includes rare archival materials as well as interviews with colleagues and friends including Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and Alice Walker.

Hiighjacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of Empire documents the Pentagon and White House process of disinformation, exaggeration, and media-supported propaganda between 9/11 and America’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Narrated by Julian Bond, this sobering and provocative documentary includes interviews with Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin, Daniel Ellsberg, Chalmers Johnson, Mark Crispin Miller, Norman Mailer, Benjamin Barber, Scott Ritter, Immanuel Wallerstein and others.

A discussion follows both films.

Cinemateca at the Biblioteca

José Luis Pick’n’tip:


The Pick:

Genesis

This is a very unique and often jaw-dropingly beautiful film. Essentially this film explores our evolution from the big bang on. A truly ambitious effort for a mere 80 minute film. This story is told from a South African narrator who appears throughout to wax poetic about the fabric of the cosmos. This film provides many moments of beauty and awe. The visuals provided in this film are without equal. From an ostrich in uterus and hatching (from the inside of the egg!!!), to the mating dance of a seahorse, this film will help you appreciate the diverse and fascinating world we often fail to appreciate.

Another excellent choice will be Seducing Doctor Lewis, a very good French Canadian comedy

The Movies:

Love Actually (2003)
Tuesday, March 13 at 12 noon
Wednesday, March 14 at 3 pm
Romantic Comedies, English with Spanish subtitles, 135 minutes.
Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Rowan Atkinson

An ensemble comedy that tells 10 separate (but intertwining) London love stories, leading to a big climax on Christmas Eve. One of the threads follows the brand-new, unmarried Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) of the United Kingdom, who, on his first day in 10 Downing Street, falls in love with the girl (Martine McCutcheon) who brings him his tea. Denise Richards, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley and Rowan Atkinson co-star.

Genesis (2004)
Wednesday, March 14 at 5:30 pm
Thursday, March 15 at 5:30 pm
Tuesday, January 16 at 5 pm
Cultural Documentary, English, 81 minutes
Director: Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou
Cast: Sotigui Kouyate

A right-on blend of humour and seriousness, innocence and wisdom results when an African storyteller (Sotigui Kouyate) uses the language of myth and fable to relate the birth of the universe and the appearance of life on Earth -- in essence, the story of all of us. Kouyate wends a fascinating tale of time, matter, birth, love and death in which animals are the main players. 

Seducing Doctor Lewis (La Grande Seduction 2003)
Friday, March, 16 at 12 noon
Friday, March 16 at 5:30 pm
French Comedy, French with English subtitles, 108 minutes
Director: Jean-Francois Pouliot
Cast: Raymond Bouchard, Lucie Laurier, Rita Lafontaine, Bruno Blanchet

This comedy follows a small fishing town in Quebec that's facing tough times as the economy continues to take a hit. The townspeople are thrilled when a major company chooses their locale to build a factory; trouble is, the factory will be built only if the town can convince a full-time doctor to move there. So, a local man (Raymond Bouchard) organizes a no-holds-barred crusade to bring in a big city doctor (David Boutin).

Kids Movie: Cartoons
Free entrance theater capacity 
Saturday, March 17 at 12 noon



Musical Saturdays: 
Mozart
The Marriage of Figaro
Saturday March 17 at 2:30pm
Sung in Italian, English subtitles, 169 minutes

Next week: Carmen

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart’s timeless opera buffa, is one of the greatest of all operatic masterpieces. It is based on Beaumarchais’ comedy Le Marriage de Figaro and tells the tale of the servant Figaro, who is about to marry the maid Susanna. Count Almaviva, keeping an eye on Susanna himself, tries to prevent this marriage with the help of Bortolo, the doctor, but is continually thwarted.

Our singers are Bryn Terfel, Alison Hagley, and Rodney Gilfry. Directed by John Eliot Gardiner. From the Thèatre du Chatelet, Paris.