Both a political thriller and a human drama, the film traces the gradual disillusionment of Captain Gerd Wiesler, a highly skilled officer who works for the Stasi, East Germany’s all-powerful secret police.
Language: German
Drama
2 hours, 17 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thelivesofothers/
Having recently died, leaving her family in a mess, a mother returns to provide a ghostly helping hand.
Language: Spanish
Comedy/Drama
2 hours
Rating: R
Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/volver/
Set in southern Minnesota’s farm country, Sweet Land is a poignant and lyrical celebration of land, love, and the American immigrant experience.
Language: English/German/Norwegian
Drama
1 hour, 50 minutes
Rating: PG
Website: http://www.sweetlandmovie.com
A random gun accident by two Moroccan boys sets the lives of four separate groups of strangers on three different continents on a collision course. There are no villains, only victims of fate and circumstance.
Language: English/French/Arabic/Spanish/Japanese
Drama
2 hours, 22 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.paramountvantage.com/babel/
At the end of the Spanish civil war, a young girl meets the god Pan, who gives her three challenges.
Language: Spanish
Fantasy
1 hour, 52 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.panslabyrinth.com
A nomad child finds and gives a home to a stray dog lost in the Mongolian grasslands.
Language: Mongolian
Drama
1 hour, 33 minutes
Rating: G
Website: http://www.caveoftheyellowdog.com/
A wicked delight. Adapted by playwright Patrick Marber from Zoe Heller’s acclaimed novel, it’s at once a comedy of cluelessness and class, a melodrama of two women in the grips of wildly inappropriate obsessions, and a “Fatal Attraction”-style thriller.
Language: English
Drama
1 hour, 31 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/NOAS
In a future where America has lost the war on drugs, a reluctant undercover cop is ordered to start spying on his friends.
Language: English
Animation
1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.warnerbros.fr/ascannerdarkly/
Dan, and idealistic inner-city junior high school teacher with a drug habit, and Drey, one of his troubled students, stumble into an unexpected friendship that threatens either to undo them or to provide the vital change they both need to move forward in their lives.
Language: English
Drama
1 hour, 46 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.halfnelsonthefilm.com/
The Science of Sleep is a playful romantic fantasy set inside the topsy-turvy brain of Stephane Miroux, and eccentric young man whose dreams constantly invade his waking life.
Language: Spanish/English/French
Comedy
1 hour, 45 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.wip.warnerbros.com/scienceofsleep/
At a time when the United States is fighting for democracy and freedom in another country, this documentary raises questions about our own right to freedom of speech and the negative consequences it sometimes has.
Language: English
Documentary
1 hour, 33 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.myspace.com/shutupandsing
Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970’s.
Language: English
Drama
2 hours
Rating: R
Website: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/lastkingofscotland
The History Boys tells the story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge.
Language: English
Comedy/Drama
1 hour, 44 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464049//
Iraq in Fragments illuminates post-war Iraq in three acts, building a vivid picture of a country pulled in different directions by religion and ethnicity. This film powerfully explores the lives of ordinary Iraqis: people whose thoughts, beliefs, aspirations, and concerns are at once personal and illustrative of larger issues in Iraq today.
Language: Arabic/Kurdish/English
Documentary
1 hour, 34 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Website: http://www.iraqinfragments.com/
After failing ill, Lazarescu spends his last nights on Earth being ferried by ambulance to different hopitals that won’t admit him. What’s most impressive is how the film functions equally well as a social-realist epic and a blackly comic allegorical satire.
Language: Romanian
Black Comedy
2 hours, 34 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456149/
Set in 1938 Colonial India, against Mahatma Gandhi’s rise to power, Water begins when 8-year-old Chuyia is widowed and sent to a home where Hindu widows must live in penitence.
Language: Hindi
Drama
1 hour, 57 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Website: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/water/
Mongolian Ping Pong is a tender, visually stunning comedy-drama set on the steppes of Inner Mongolia and take a humorously gentle approach to the culture clash between the primitive and the modern.
Language: Mongolian
Comedy
1 hour, 42 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Website: http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/mongolianpingpongdvd.html
This documentary tells the story of the people who followed Jim Jones from Indiana, to California, and finally to the remote jungles of Guyana, South America, in a misbegotten quest to build and ideal society.
Language: English
Documentary
1 hour, 26 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Website: http://www.7thart.com/joomla/
Powerfully telling the story of a South African hero’s journey to freedom, Catch a Fire is a political thriller that takes place during the country’s turbulent and divided times in early 1980’s, and in the new South Africa of today.
Language: English
Drama
1 hour, 41 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Website: http://www.catchafiremovie.com/
Thank You for Smoking is a fiercely satrical look at today’s “culture of spin.” The hero of the film is Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for Big Tobacco, who makes his living defending the rights of smokers and cigarette makers in today’s neo-puritancial culture.
Language: English
Comedy
1 hour, 32 minutes
Rating: R
Website : http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thankyouforsmoking/
Set against the harsh and unforgiving landscape of the 1880s Australian outback, The Proposition is a visually stunning tale of loyalty, revenge and the quest for justice in a land without rule.
Language: English
Action
1 hour, 44 minutes
Rating: R
Website: http://www.thepropositionfilm.com/
Dispossessed twenty-year old Bruno (Renier) lives with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend Sonia (François) in Seraing, an eastern Belgian steel town. They live off Sonia’s unemployment benefits and the panhandling and petty theft committed by Bruno and his gang. Their lives change forever when Sonia gives birth to their child, Jimmy.
Language: French
Drama
1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating: R
Award: 2005 Cannes Film Festival - Golden Palm
Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thechild/
Little Miss Sunshine is an American family road comedy that shatters the mold. Brazenly satirical and yet deeply human, the film introduces audiences to one of the most endearingly fractured families in recent cinema history: the Hoovers, whose trip to a pre-pubescent beauty pageant results not only in comic mayhem but in death, transformation and a moving look at the surprising rewards of being losers in a winning-crazed culture.
Language: English
Comedy
1 hour, 41 minutes
Rating: R
On the sun drenched island of Haiti in the ’70s, foreigners idle away their vacations in the palm-fringed paradise of the beach hotels. Brenda (Young), Ellen (Rampling) and Sue (Portal), three North American women, converge on the island looking for flirtation, relaxation and respite from their colorless jobs and marriages. They find what they are looking for in Legba (Cesar), an enigmatic local Adonis whose beauty and passion has them enthralled. It is this passion that will lead them away from the gilded cage of tourism and will open their eyes to the poverty stricken and dangerous world of Haiti.
Language: French/ English
Dram
1 hour, 48 minutes
Unrated
Awards: 2005 Venice Film Festival: ‘CinemAvvenire’ Award, and Marcello Mastroianni Award
The true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in Germany’s official Foreign Language Film selection for the 2005 Academy Awards. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the young coed-turned-fearless activist. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl’s life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence.
Language: German
Drama
1 hour, 57 minutes
Unrated
Website: http://www.sophieschollmovie.com/
Awards: 2005 European Film Awards- Best Actress, Best Director
This documentary chronicles the life and mysterious death of the GM EV1, examining its cultural and economic ripple effects and how they reverberated through the halls of government and big business.
Language: English
Documentary
1 hour, 32 minutes
Rating: PG
Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/
Set in the otherworldly expanses of Southern Patagonia, this quirkily comic road-movie is a distinctive blend of bemused satire and gentle humanism.
Language: Spanish
Comedy
1 hour, 32 minutes
Unrated
Website: http://www.ocean-films.com/historiasminimas/
This documentary is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a “who’s who” of military and beltway insiders.
Language: English
Documentary
1 hour, 38 minutes
Rating: PG 13
Awards: 2005 Sundance Film Festival- Grand Jury Prize
Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
In the imaginary village of Entshongweni, very far from western civilization, the young James is chosen to undertake a mission - a pilgrimage to holy Jerusalem.
Languges: Hebrew / English / Zulu
Comedy
1 hour, 27 minutes
Unrated
Awards: 2003 Award of the Israeli Film Academy for Best Actor
Website: http://www.james-journey.com/
This documentary offers a passionate and inspirational look at Al Gore’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it.
Language: English
Documentary
1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating: PG
Website: http://www.climatecrisis.net/
Filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s intimate musical portrait of legendary singer/songwriter Neil Young, filmed on the occasion of the world premiere of Young’s “Prairie Wind” concert at Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium.
Language: English
Documentary
1 hour, 43 minutes
Rating: PG
Website: http://www.heartofgoldmovie.com/
Awards: 2006 NatFilm Festival Audience Award
Sunday, November 5, 2006 at 2:00 PM
Walker Recital Hall (Hirt Building)
(Visiting Artists Series)
Sara Davis Buechner has been celebrated as a pianist of noteworthy accomplishment, virtuosic mastery, artistic sensitivity and extraordinary versatility. A major prizewinner of many of the world’s most prestigious international piano competitions - Reine Elisabeth of Belgium, Leeds, Salzburg, Sydney and Vienna - she established her early career by winning the Gold Medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as a Bronze Medalist of the 1986 Tschaikowsky International Piano Competition in Moscow.
Set amidst the bustling townships of Johannesburg and infused with the pumping high-energy Kwaito music of the top South African artist Zola, Tsotsi is an extraordinary portrait of the choies we make in life and the personal triumph that comes from choosing love over rage.
The 8:00 PM show will be introduced by Dr. Jim Adovasio as part of inauguration events for Mercyhurst’s 11th president, Dr. Tom Gamble.
Languages: Zulu / Xhosa / Afrikaans
Drama
1 hour, 34 minutes
Rating: R
Awards: 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
Website: http://www.tsotsi.com
Anthony Hopkins stars as Burt Munro, a man who never let the dreams of youth fade. After a lifetime of perfecting his classic Indian motorcycle, Burt sets off from the bottom of the world to test his bike at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. With all the odds against him, he set a new speed record and captured the spirit of his time. Burt Munro’s 1967 world record remains unbroken and his legend lives on today.
The 8:00 PM show will be introduced by Dr. Jim Adovasio as part of inauguration events for Mercyhurst’s 11th president, Dr. Tom Gamble.
Language: English
Drama
2 hours, 7 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Website: http://www.worldsfastestindian.com/
