Co-sponsored Events
Saint Mary’s College, Vander Vennet Theater
January 31 - February 2, 2006
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Tuesday, January 31, 7pm
Mardi Gras: Made in China
David Redmon, USA, 2004, 72min.
In English, Cantonese, Fujianese and Mandarin with English subtitles.
Mardi Gras: Made in China tracks the “bead trail” from the factory in China to Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, poignantly exposing the inequities of globalization. Filmmaker Redmon gained unprecedented access to follow the stories of four young Chinese women working and living in the largest Mardi Gras bead factory in the world, located in Fuzhou, China. We witness their economic realities, self-sacrifice, and dreams of a better life. Redmon inter-cuts these stories with strikingly candid interviews with the factory manager and the US businessman (who owns the factory) who offer their own visions on why globalization is a success. Brilliantly interweaving factory life with Mardi Gras festivities, the film opens the blind eye of consumerism by visually introducing workers and festivalgoers to each other. A dialogue results when bead-wearing partyers are shown images of the Chinese workers and asked if they know the origin of their beads, while the factory women view pictures of Americans exchanging beads, soliciting more beads, and celebrating.
Wednesday, February 1, 7pm
State of Fear
Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís, and Peter Kinoy, USA/Perú, 2005, 94 min.
In English and Spanish with English subtitles.
How can an open society balance demands for security with democracy? State of Fear dramatizes the human and societal costs a democracy faces when it embarks on a “war” against terror, a “war” potentially without end, all too easily exploited by unscrupulous leaders seeking personal political gain. The film follows events in Perú, yet it serves as a cautionary tale for a nation like the United States. Filmmakers Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy masterfully blend personal testimony, history, and archival footage to tell the story of escalating violence in the Andean nation and how the fear of terror undermined democracy, making Perú a virtual dictatorship where official corruption replaced the rule of law. Terrorist attacks by Shining Path insurgents provoked a military occupation of the countryside. Military justice replaced civil authority. Widespread abuses by the Peruvian Army went unpunished. Terrorism continued to spread. Nearly 70,000 civilians eventually died at the hands of Shining Path and the Peruvian military.
Thursday, February 2, 7pm
The Education of Shelby Knox
Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, USA, 2005, 76 min. 
In English.
The national debate over federally funded “abstinence-only” sex education programs plays out in full force in The Education of Shelby Knox. Fifteen-year-old Shelby Knox of Lubbock, Texas is a self-described “good Southern Baptist girl,” who herself has pledged abstinence until marriage. When she finds that Lubbock has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the nation, and her county’s high schools teach abstinence as the only safe sex, she becomes an unlikely advocate for comprehensive sex education, profoundly changing her political and spiritual views along the way. “I think that God wants you to question,” Shelby says, “to do more than just blindly be a follower, because he can’t use blind followers. He can use people like me who realize there’s more in the world that can be done.” Here is a story for our times, where the combustible mix of politics, family, and faith are not as predictable as the red state/blue state divide would suggest.
Sponsored by the Center for Women's InterCultural Leadership, the English Department, Women's Studies Program, and the InterCultural Studies Program at Saint Mary's College, and by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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