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Notes & Quotes
News from the AV Library
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by Mary Lou Neighbour, AV Librarian
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Quote:
“Does art reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other
art form, films have been a mirror held up to society’s porous face.”
Marjorie Rosen, American film historian, in Popcorn
Venus, 1973.
A few news flashes! First, remember the email that I sent to everyone last spring about two films by a young Iranian filmmaker, Samira Makhmalbaf? They were highly recommended by journalist, Robin Wright, when Ms. Wright visited our campus in May. Well, we now have both titles, “The Apple” (1997) and “Blackboards” (1999) in the AV Library collection.
For those of you who don’t remember, Robin Wright, in an afternoon Q&A session on campus, extolled the virtues of these fine films made when the director was 17 and 19, respectively. Ms. Wright commended them as excellent films through which we can come to understand the region better. After doing a bit of research, I found that the films were by Samira Makhmalbaf, the daughter of a revolutionary Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The father, Mohsen, had started a film school in Iran in his own home, when he was denied support by the Iranian government. His first students were his wife, three children (the youngest of whom was eight) and four friends.
The first film by Samira, “The Apple” (DVD 1435), re-enacts the true story of two young girls, who since the age of two, have been locked up with their blind mother for 11 years by their father. He is afraid that “if they are exposed to the sun, they will fade like flowers.” Through the intervention of a social worker, the girls are freed to explore the world outside their home. The filmmaker’s father, Mohsen, was screenwriter and editor on the project, but the film was truly Samira’s production, for which she won the Camera D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Watching this poignant film, you feel immersed in everyday Iranian society.
In the second film by Samira, “The Blackboard” (DVD 1395), two teachers roam the brutal landscape of the Iran/Iraq border in search of pupils. The teachers carry blackboards on their backs, sometimes using them as shelter, as camouflage, and as shields from gunfire. This film was co-written by Samira with her father, who also acted as editor. However, as director, Samira, became the youngest filmmaker ever to win the Prix du Jury at Cannes in 2000. If you wish to feel inspired as an educator, see this film to experience the hardships and joys these teachers experience during their courageous efforts to bring instruction to the children of this dangerous region. Please come to the AV Library to check out these two DVDs which are highly recommended by Ms. Wright.
Our second news flash is that coming this year are online catalog records for over one hundred Annenberg series titles that are available free via videostreaming. Annenberg, a well known publisher of instructional materials, has chosen to put most of their instructional catalog, formerly available on videotape or via broadcast, on the Internet as free videostreamed programs. These include series such as Against All Odds (statistics), American Cinema, Connect with English (ESL), Biography of America (history), Cycles of Life (biology), Discovering Psychology, Voices and Visions (poetry), The Western Tradition (history) and The World of Chemistry.
Library Database Manager, Lisa McColl, and I are currently at work loading and editing the over 1500 catalog records for the videostreamed programs. The records will then be loaded into our online catalog, WebCat. This means, that, when you do a search in the catalog and pull up one of the records for an Annenberg program, you can just click on a link and be taken to the program web site, where you can watch the program on the computer. We will let you know when the records for the videostreamed programs are in the online catalog and ready for use. It will be some time later this year.
New DVD series for students and the classroom:
| Anatomy (8 parts) | DVD 1352 |
| Biology (4 parts) | DVD 1338 |
| Chemistry (9 parts) | DVD 1372 |
| Nutrition (11 parts) | DVD 1340 |
| Organic Chemistry (14 parts) | DVD 1325 |
| Physics (9 parts) | DVD 1339 |
Other recent additions:
| Before Night Falls (in Spanish, the life of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas) | DVD 1413 |
| Bleak House (Dickens, recent PBS series) | DVD 1373 |
| Good Night and Good Luck (Edward R. Murrow) | DVD 1307 |
| Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson, recent PBS series) | DVD 1375 |
| Match Point (Woody Allen) | DVD 1381 |
| North Country (Charlize Theron) | DVD 1377 |
| Paper Clips (Holocaust education project) | DVD 1350 |
| The Producers (Broadway musical) | DVD 1360 |
| Proof (based on the Broadway play about a brilliant math professor and his daughter) | DVD 1382 |
| The Shipping News (E. Annie Proulx story with Kevin Spacey) | DVD 1385 |
| Sybil (Sally Field – multiple personalities) | DVD 1414 |
| Syriana (George Clooney) | DVD 1396 |
| Tsotsi (South African – Oscar winning film) | DVD 1437 |
| Transamerica (tour de force performance by Felicity Huffman) | DVD 1371 |
| Walk on Water (recent Israeli film about a Mossad agent seeking a Nazi war criminal) | DVD 1408 |
| Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were-rabbit (delightfully wacky claymation) | DVD 1383 |
| War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise in H.G. Wells) | DVD 1376 |
| The World’s Fastest Indian (Australian film with Anthony Hopkins; the “Indian” is a motorcycle; based on a true “triumph-of-the-human-spirit” story) | DVD 1417 |
