Films screen on Mondays at 7 p.m.
Obedience
8 September/105 Little Hall, Golden Auditorium/7:00 p.m.
Directed Stanley Milgram, 45 min., 1965.
In 1963, Dr. Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, advertised for volunteers to participate in a memory experiment. The volunteers are asked to punish other subjects who remember incorrectly – by shocking them with electricity. The varied responses of the volunteers raise significant questions about legitimate authority, the responsibility to obey commands, and the capacity of human beings to hurt one another. While the experiment took place over 40 years ago, the questions raised in Obedience have become newly relevant remain important in the context of current debates about torture and human rights in the U.S.-led War on Terror.
Discovering Dominga: A Survivor’s Story
15 September/105 Little Hall, Golden Auditorium/7:00 p.m.
Directed by Patricia Flynn, 60 min., 2003
In Discovering Dominga, a young Iowa mother, Denese Joy Becker, comes to understand that she is a survivor of the 1982 Rio Negro massacre in Guatemala. At the time of the massacre, Denese Becker was a nine-year-old Mayan Indian girl named Dominga Sic Ruiz. Her parents and more than 200 other residents of Rio Negro, who resisted relocation to make way for a dam, were murdered by the state. After the massacre, Dominga escaped to the mountains and was later adopted by a couple from Iowa. The film follows Dominga’s adult journey to uncover her past and work to bring the military commanders responsible for the massacre to justice.
In Rwanda We Say…The Family That Does Not Speak Dies
22 September/105 Little Hall, Golden Auditorium/7:00 p.m.
Directed by Anne Aghion, 57 min., 2004.
In Rwanda We Say … begins as 16,000 genocide suspects are released across Rwanda, subsequent to confessing and having served the maximum sentence the Gacaca citizen-based-justice tribunals would eventually impose. The film follows the release and return of one man to his village. As villagers articulate their ideas, to Aghion and to one another, the initial presence of distrust and fear of violence among the villagers slowly changes.
Kippur
6 October/105 Little Hall, Golden Auditorium/7:00 p.m.
Directed Amos Gitai, 117 min., 2000
Kippur offers an account of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War through the experiences of two young Israeli soldiers, Weinraub and Ruso, who are members of a helicopter rescuing the wounded Amos Gitai, who served in the war, has created a film striking for the stark textures of violence and daily life that he offers, as well as the collapse of the space between them during war. P-CON’s screening of this film coincides with the 35th anniversary of the beginning of the Arab-Israeli War in 1973.
Taxi to the Dark Side
17 November/105 Little Hall, Golden Auditorium /7:00 p.m.
Directed by Alex Gibney, 106 min., 2007.
Following the life and death of an Afghan taxi driver, Dilawar, Taxi to the Dark Side explores the practices of detention and torture in U.S. interrogation centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. Viewers are challenged to consider the implications when the rule of law is abrogated in the service of the “war on terror.” The film poses an unsettling question: what happens when a few men use the wartime powers of the executive to undermine the very principles on which the United States was founded?
** Winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Documentary Feature **
Standard Operating Procedure
1 December/105 Little Hall, Golden Auditorium 7:00 p.m.
Directed by Errol Morris, 116 min., 2008
In Standard Operating Procedure, Morris draws on interviews with five of the seven convicted perpetrators in the Abu Ghraib prison incident to provoke a series of questions about violence, torture, and accountability. Combined with extensive use of the photos taken by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib and recreation of some of the events which took place, the film shows the blurred lines between private/public, state/individual, and following orders/being party to human rights violations. It also raises stark questions about visual media and representation.
** Winner of the Jury Grand Prix at the Berlin International Film Festival **