The SUU Languages and Philosophy department is hosting the annual International Film Festival from Jan. 29 to Feb. 10 in the Sharwan Smith Student Theatre, room 161D.
The festival will screen “The Drifter (Eine flexible Frau)” today at 5 p.m. The 2010 film by director Tatjana Turanskyj has a 97 minute run time, and is a German film with English subtitles. Guest speaker Hester Baer, Associate Professor of German Film Studies & Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, will introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion.
Here is a brief description of the film from the film festival’s web page:
“‘The Drifter’ deals with the question of the identity-donating meaning of work. Greta M., 40, a woman with a postmodern, fragile architect’s biography, loses her job. She is later fired after trying to work in a call center. Like Don Quichotte, she fights against uncanny powers: her son, “the dangerous maternity”, the job coach, the suffocating architecture of new Berlin (gated communities, social town borders) and not least against her own paranoia and fear of becoming a woman without order.
Greta drinks and drifts between adaptation and contradiction through her life. On this tour de force between the call center, searching for work, the job center, her life coach, architecture offices, her son’s school, and bars, the protagonist drifts through Berlin’s outskirts and arrives at the “town of women”.
The meetings are snapshots of modern women’s lives. Only the old Hölderlin expert Dorothea is able to donate consolation, and young Chinese show the future of work and architecture. The plot frees itself of generic convention to highlight experience.”
Dr. Corey Twitchell, Assistant Professor of German, chose this film for the film festival, and picked this film for its depiction of the “constantly evolving world of present-day Berlin, Germany’s capital following reunification in 1990.”
“I chose this film in collaboration with our guest speaker, Dr. Hester Baer (University of Maryland, College Park,) who will be visiting campus to introduce the film and lead a “Dinner & Dialogue” discussion following the screening,” Twitchell said.
“Dr. Baer, who has interviewed the filmmaker in Berlin for her current book project,” he continued, ‘will be able to offer us unique insight not only into Turanskyj’s work, but also the current state of German cinema and film-making.”
Click here for more information on the International Film Festival.
Story by
Andrew Leavitt
life@suunews.com
Photo Courtest of
SUU Language and Philosophy Department
