Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008
Westminster College's Jake Erhardt International Film Series will present three films in April. All films will be shown at 7 p.m. in the Sebastian Mueller Theater in the McKelvey Campus Center and are free and open to the public.
The series begins Tuesday, April 8, with the 2007 Irish film Once, directed by John Carney. A Dublin street musician meets a young Czech woman, a pianist, who helps him cut a demo CD to send to music producers. Their relationship develops through their love of music, but this is not a predictable love story.
La Haine, a 1995 French film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, will be shown Tuesday, April 15. As the title suggests, this film is about hatred. Overcrowding, poverty, racism, and police brutality ignite riots in a French ghetto that directly affect the lives of three young men. Although brutal, the film's message resounds 13 years after it was made.
The final film of this series is Ikiru, a 1952 Japanese work directed by Akira Kurosawa. It will be shown Tuesday, April 29. The story is about a Japanese bureaucrat looking for meaning in his life after he is diagnosed with cancer. The film explores the notion of how one person can make a difference and is still inspiring more than 50 years after it was made.
The International Film Series was named in honor of its founder, Dr. Jacob Erhardt, professor emeritus of German at Westminster College. Erhardt, who taught at Westminster from 1968 until his retirement in 2004, served as chair of his department from 1970-1986, was named the Language Educator of the Year in 1989 by the Pennsylvania State Modern Languages Association, translated into English Robert Reitzel's Adventures of a Greenhorn, and was recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities as an outstanding member.
Contact Dr. Deborah Mitchell, Westminster College associate professor of English, at (724) 946-7030 or e-mail dmitchel@westminster.edu for additional information.
