A Collaboration with New York University Abu Dhabi Institute

Journeys in Film History takes an innovative approach to introducing audiences to film history by examining stories that involve the common element of an actual, potential, or prevented journey.

With a focus on narrative films from the 1950s and 1960s, the series highlights an important period in film history when the category of “art film” reemerged in international film festivals as a counter to dominant commercial modes of film industries in places like Cairo, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Los Angeles-­New York.  These decades mark a period when distinct cinematic styles conveyed different artistic concerns in East Asia, Latin America, North Africa, South Asia, Sub-­Saharan Africa, and Western Europe. Filmmakers such as Youssef Chahine, Henri-­Georges Clouzot, Ozu Yasujiro, Satyajit Ray, and Sembène Ousmane emerged on the international scene and changed forever ways that audiences conceived film’s ability to tell stories.
 
The 1950s and 1960s also mark a significant period when the complexities of modern life involved seemingly contradictory moments of expanding prosperity and poverty, of accelerated decolonization and neocolonialism. Complicating assumptions that journeys involve voluntary travel for the purpose of self-­discovery, the series looks at journeys prompted by broader social forces. For many people, journeys are involuntary and bring self-­alienation.  The films evoke questions during these pivotal decades of the twentieth century on different reasons that people chose or were compelled to make journeys, as well as reasons that some people could not travel.

Program:
All films screened at NYUAD Downtown Campus 

Tuesday 31 January, 7pm

Dream of the Rarebit Fiend
(USA 1906; black & white; 7 minutes; dir. Edwin S. Porter)

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life
(USA 1925; black & white; English intertitles; 75 minutes; dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Thursday 23 February, 7pm

Borom sarret
(Sénégal 1966; black & white; French; 20 minutes; dir. Ousmane Sembène)

Black Girl/La Noire de…
(France-­Sénégal 1965; black & white; French; 65 minutes; dir. Ousmane Sembène)

Thursday 15 March, 7pm

Tokyo Story/Tokyo monogatari
(Japan 1953; black & white; Japanese; 136 minutes; dir. Ozu Yasujiro)

Saturday 07 April, 7pm 

Cairo Station/Bab el hadid
(Egypt 1958; black & white; Arabic; 74 minutes; dir. Youssef Chahine)

Saturday 05 May, 7pm

Pather Panchali/Song of the Little Road
(India 1955; black & white; Bengali; 126 minutes; dir. Satyajit Ray)

Thursday 17 May, 7pm

Wages of Fear/La Salaire de la peur
(France 1953; black & white; French, Spanish, Italian, English, and German; 148 minutes;
dir. Henri-­Georges Clouzot)