Global finance is profiting handsomely from the pandemic while growing numbers are facing housing insecurity, threats of eviction, and houselessness. Join us in watching the documentary film, Push, which tells the story of how global banks and investment firms are turning our communities into sources of private profit, taking control of residential housing around the world, and pushing out low-income residents. The film tells another story too: residents and city officials are coming together to demand that housing be protected as a human right.

A film screening of Maidan hosted by the Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia

Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUpf-ygrz8rGNQvH2CmduQOt7M_TqZVLV0a

Pelo Malo (Bad Hair)

Fiction / Venezuela / 2013

The Chambermaid

Fiction / Mexico / 2019

The Dead and the Others (Chuva é Cantoria na Aldeia dos Mortos)

Fiction / Brazil, Portugal / 2018

There are no spirits or snakes tonight and the forest around the village is quiet. Fifteen year old Ihjãc has nightmares since he lost his father. He is an indigenous Krahô from the north of Brazil. Ihjãc walks into darkness, his sweaty body moves with fright. A distant chant comes through the palm trees. His father's voice calls him to the waterfall: it's time to organize a funerary feast so the spirit can depart to the dead's village.

Award-winning actress Samal Yeslyamova (Tulpan) plays the role of Ayka, a Kyrgyz illegal migrant in Moscow. Ayka has no money, no home, and she just gave birth. She is never still, so we follow her through wintry Moscow streets on her reckless pursuit to find work. An aggressive soundtrack and visceral cinematography emphasize the vision of a huge megalopolis where anyone can get lost or disappear. It is Yeslyamova, however, who steals the camera; always moving forward in her unraveling as she enters her curtained den until the end, when she and the camera give us a chance to breathe.

From Academy Award-nominated director David France ("How to Survive a Plague," "The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson") comes "Welcome to Chechnya," a powerful and eye-opening documentary about a group of activists risking their lives to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ persecution in the repressive and closed Russian republic of Chechnya. With unfettered access and a commitment to protecting anonymity, this documentary exposes Chechnya's underrepresented atrocities while highlighting a group of people who are confronting brutality head-on.

Third in the series of schlocky films from the 50s. The first Pontianak film appeared in 1957 Singaporean Malay horror film directed by Indian film director B.N. Rao starring Maria Menado and M. Amin. Based on the Malay folktales of a blood-sucking ghost born from a woman who dies in childbirth. The smash hit premiered on 27 April 1957 and screened for almost three months at the local Cathay cinemas. Its success spawned two other sequels, Dendam Pontianak (Revenge of the Pontianak, 1957) and Sumpah Pontianak (Curse of the Pontianak, 1958).

Edo Avant-Garde reveals the untold story of the vital role Japanese artists of the Edo era (1603 – 1868) played in developing “modern art.” During the Edo era, Japan prospered in peaceful isolation from Western powers, while audacious artists innovated abstraction, minimalism, surrealism and the illusion of 3-D. Their originality is most striking in images of the natural world depicted with gold leaf on large-scale folding screens that anticipate 20th century installation art.

Watch Party of Your Excellency. We will briefly connect over Zoom and then watch in Netflix Party.
This 2019 Nollywood film follows Chief Olalekan Ajadi, a bumbling, billionaire businessman and failed presidential candidate who is obsessed with Donald Trump. Just when his campaign looks set to be another disaster, Ajadi is anointed by a major party and becomes a credible contender, all through the power of social media.