Arts Calendar Spring 2014 PDF - Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College
Brunswick, Maine
2014
February
Saturday, February 1
Family Saturday at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art
10:00 a.m.
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Bowdoin College students lead a program of activities and fun for children, working with the
exhibitions on view. FREE.
Wednesday, February 5
Ying Quartet
7:30 p.m.
Kanbar Auditorium, Studzinski Recital Hall
The Ying Quartet occupies a position of unique prominence in the classical music world, combining
brilliantly communicative performances with a fearlessly imaginative view of contemporary
chamber music. The Ying Quartet’s performance is part of a multi-day residency at the College.
Tickets: $15 public/FREE Friends and Bowdoin.
Sponsored by the Donald M. Zuckert Visiting Professorship Fund.
Ying Quartet
For more information:
207-725-3375
All events are open to the public.
Admission to most events is free
and no tickets are required. Any
ticket or admission requirements
are listed within the event
description. For information on
acquiring tickets, see the inside
back cover.
All events are subject to change.
Wednesday through Saturday, February 5–8
The Bowdoin French Film Festival
See times below.
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center
The Bowdoin French Film Festival brings to campus five poignant and thought-provoking movies
from around the Francophone world. Some details of the festival are still being finalized. Updates
will be available on the online Bowdoin arts calendar. FREE.
Wednesday, February 5 at 7:00 p.m.—Après Mai (Something in the Air)
Set in the early 1970s, this bracing semi-autobiographical film by Olivier Assayas resists easy
nostalgia, focusing instead on the turbulence of late adolescence and young adulthood. While
delving deeply into the private dramas of Gilles, a high-school student consumed with belated
revolutionary zeal, this coming-of-age tale never lets us forget that this richly drawn adolescent
protagonist is also a player in a much broader historical moment: the era when revolutionary hopes
of May ’68 began to splinter and fade.
Thursday, February 6 at 7:00 p.m.—La Pirogue
Moussa Touré’s trenchant chronicle of a sea trek from West Africa to Europe lays bare the incalculable
perils of immigration, as veteran fisherman Baye Laye reluctantly agrees to be the captain of the
long, narrow canoe of the title. Illegally transporting a group of people from Dakar, Senegal, to Spain,
the pirogue’s passengers hope to start anew in the West and escape the grim economic realities at
home. Unlike most films about immigration, The Pirogue refuses to speak in hazy ideologies:
it presents the brutal realities that millions worldwide face in the effort to leave one land for another.
Friday, February 7 at 4:30 p.m.—Couleur de Peau: Miel (Approved for Adoption)
This adaptation of co-director Jung’s autobiographical graphic novel recounts his childhood and
adolescence after a Belgian couple adopts him from a South Korean orphanage in the early 1970s.
Though raised by loving parents and supported by his four older siblings, he often feels like an
outsider and endures many painful episodes, some self-inflicted, in his struggle to understand his
identity. Approved for Adoption poignantly traces one man’s interrogation of the definitions of ethnicity,
culture, and the concept of “home.”
Friday, February 7 at 7:30 p.m.—L’Enfant d’en Haut
An examination of class differences and tenuous family ties, cinematographer Ursula Meier’s
second film focuses on 12-year-old Simon and his desperate attempts to survive a bleak housing
project in the valley of a posh Swiss ski resort. The money Simon earns from stealing skis and
other expensive equipment supports not just himself but his young mother, Louise, a wayward,
unemployed young woman in her twenties who tries to pass him off as her brother.
Saturday, February 8 at 7:00 p.m.—Monsieur Lazhar
Writer-director Philippe Falardeau’s unforgettable movie, based on a one-person play by Evelyne de
la Chenelière, explores the intricate process by which M. Lazhar earns the respect and trust of his
pupils, some the children of immigrants or, like this devoted instructor, recent arrivals to Quebec.
As the reasons for M. Lazhar’s immigration to Canada from Algeria are made clear, so too is his
rather unconventional method for applying for the teaching position. Monsieur Lazhar is that rarest
of movies about education, one that avoids clichés and sentimentality, favoring instead honesty and
clear-eyed compassion.
For more information on these and many other events go to:
bowdoin.edu/arts
Après Mai
La Pirogue
Couleur de Peau: Miel
L’Enfant d’en Haut
Monsieur Lazhar