Havel at Columbia



Panel

Film and Citizenship

Photo: Film and Citizenship In partnership with with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Moderated by Richard Peña
Nov 19
6:30pm
Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center

Richard Peña has served as the program director of The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the as director of the New York Film Festival since 1987. In January 2001 France honored him for his service in bringing foreign films to the American public, naming him Officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters. He is a Columbia University film professor, and in the past has taught film history and theory at Harvard University, MIT, University of California (Berkeley) and City University of New York. Peña is the host of "Conversations in World Cinema" on the Sundance Channel and he appeared as himself in the 2000 documentary Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema After the 1979 Revolution .

James Schamus , who received his Ph.D. in English from U.C. Berkeley, is a Golden Globe winning and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, producer, and film executive. His long collaboration as writer and producer for Ang Lee has resulted in nine films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), The Ice Storm(1997) , The Wedding Banquet (1993), The Hulk (2003) and Brokeback Mountain (2005). As co-president of Focus Features, Schamus oversees the finance, production, and distribution of numerous films, including 2002's Oscar winner: The Pianist . Schamus has also produced or executive produced many of the most important American independent films of the past decade (among them Safe and The Brothers McMullen ), including four Grand Prize winners at the Sundance Film Festival. He is also a widely published film historian and theorist. He was recently named a Nuveen Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and was a University Lecturer at Columbia.

Michael Moore was born in Flint, Michigan, and studied journalism at the University of Michigan-Flint. He famously returned to his suffering hometown for his first documentary, Roger and Me . The 1989 film chronicled Moore's ongoing attempt to confront General Motors' CEO Roger Smith with the devastation he had inflicted on Flint with the company's massive downsizing. Since then he has made a number of documentaries and films, most notably the 2002 Bowling for Columbine , which used the Columbine school shooting to begin a discussion on violence and gun control in America, and 2004's hugely controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 , which focused on the Bush administration's response to/abuse of the September 11th attacks. Bowling for Columbine won the 2002 Oscar for Best Documentary, and Fahrenheit 9/11 was the recipient of the People's Choice Award for favorite motion picture, as well as setting box office records for political documentaries. He is currently in production/post-production on several projects including The Great '04 Slacker Uprising and Sicko , which will focus on the American healthcare system.

Rory Kennedy is co-founder and co-president of Moxie Firecracker Films, Inc. She is one of the nation's most prolific independent documentary filmmakers, focusing on issues ranging from poverty to domestic abuse, human rights, and AIDS. Her work has been featured on HBO, A&E, MTV, Lifetime, and PBS. She has directed and produced many films including Pandemic: Facing AIDS, a 5-part series that follows the lives of people living with AIDS throughout the world, American Hollow which documents an Appalachian family caught between tradition and modernity and was broadcast as part of HBO' s America Undercover series, receiving a Non-Fiction Primetime Emmy Award Nomination and A Boy's Life, about the troubling forces shaping the life of a boy from impoverished Mississippi. In addition to her film career, Kennedy is a social activist and human rights advocate. She has served on the board of directors for a number of non-profit organizations, including the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, and was a member of the 1999 Presidential Mission on AIDS in Africa.

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Comments

I thought the panel discussion was really first-rate, and much better than the Literature and Citizenship panel. The panelists kept to the topic and had a lot of stimulating ideas about it, and the moderator's questions were intelligent and relevant. I think they opened the discussion up to audience participation at exactly the right time, and the resulting debate was lively and exciting. I also thought it was very considerate of the organizers to open the panel with the short film dedicated to Havel, which I greatly enjoyed.

The panel was the best Havel at Columbia event I've seen. Richard Pena is an excellent moderator and asked thoughtful questions that provoked a lively discussion. James Schamus appropriately invoked Havel's and Kundera's roles in Charter 77 to contextualize the debate on stage and Michael Moore's apology to Rory Kennedy for a question he'd posed before the event added a true note of sincerity to his feelings about the role of the documentary filmmaker as citizen. Ms. Kennedy also spoke eloquently on the art of the documentary film as an essential element of its success. As for the Citizen Havel screening, I'll never forget the footage of ex-president Havel receiving his first pension. It was a remarkable evening.