Pre-conference Event
October 22-28
Race & Pedagogy Film Series is planned as a pre-conference activity that aims at generating
community dialogue around films that complicate the history of race and representation in
America cinema, films that reveal concealed truths about the history of race and representation
and bring to audiences unheard voices and unseen image makers. The Grand Cinema will host
the showing of the following artful and engaging films and documentaries between October 22
and October 28. One session at each of the following days will begin with showing of the film
and a follow up facilitated discussion.
Race, Pedagogy, and Film
at the Grand Cinema
Oct 22
Oct 23
Oct 24
Oct 25
Oct 26
Oct 27
Oct 28
For showing and ticket information, please contact The Grand Cinema at 253-593-4474 or visit
their web site at www.grandcinema.com
The Grand Cinema is located at
606 S. Fawcett Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402
List of films:
1. Bilal’s Stand (2010) 99 minutes
Directed by Sultan Sharrief
Bilal, a Muslim high school senior works at his family's long-owned taxi stand. "The Stand," as they call
it, has been the source of all activity and money for the family for the last sixty years. It seems like Bílal
is about to carry the torch. He secretly submits a college application and takes up the art of ice carving in
order to win a scholarship. However, he is forced to decide whether he will continue working at the Stand
- the only life he's ever known - or take a chance at social mobility.
2. Four Little Girls (1997) 102 minutes
Directed and Produced by Spike Lee
This film recounts the people and events leading up to the one of the most despicable hate-crimes during
the height of the civil-rights movement, the bombing of the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
In that attack, four little African-American girls lost their lives and a nation was simultaneously revolted,
angered and galvanized to push the fight for equality and justice.
3. Maelstrom (2000) 87 minutes
Written and Directed by Denis Villeneuve
The Maelstrom makes extraordinary artful use of a considerable cache of home movies shot in the
Netherlands before and during World War II dealing with the extended Peereboom family.
Information is conveyed through subtitles and, instead of voice-over, the soundtrack consists of period
sound, usually from radio broadcasts and a brooding, disturbing jazz score by Tibor Szemzõ.
4. Papers (2009)
95 minutes
Produced by Rebecca Shine and Directed by Anne Galisky
"Papers" is the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal
status. There are approximately 2 million undocumented children who were born outside the U.S. and
raised in this country. These are young people who were educated in American schools, hold American
values, know only the U.S. as home and who, upon high school graduation, find the door to their future
slammed shut.
5. Rabbit in the Moon (1999) 85 minutes
Directed by Emiko Omori
Like many Japanese Americans released from WWII internment camps, the young Omori sisters did their
best to erase the memories and scars of life under confinement. Fifty years later acclaimed filmmaker
Emiko Omori asks her older sister and other detainees to reflect on the personal and political
consequences of internment. From the exuberant recollections of a typical teenager, to the simmering rage
of citizens forced to sign loyalty oaths, Omori renders a poetic and illuminating picture of a deeply
troubling chapter in American history
6. Rabbit Proof Fence (2002) 94 minutes
Directed by Phillip Noyce from a book by Doris Pilkington
Western Australia, 1931. Government policy includes taking half-caste children from their Aboriginal
mothers and sending them a thousand miles away to what amounts to indentured servitude, "to save them
from themselves." Molly, Daisy, and Grace (two sisters and a cousin who are 14, 10, and 8) arrive at their
Gulag and promptly escape, under Molly's lead. For days they walk north, following a fence that keeps
rabbits from settlements, eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Their pursuers take
orders from the government's "chief protector of Aborigines," A.O. Neville, who is blinded by AngloChristian certainty, an evolutionary world view and conventional wisdom. Can the girls survive?
7. Rosewood (1997) 140 minutes
Directed by John Singleton
Rosewood stars Ving Rhames as a man who travels to the town of Rosewood, Florida, and becomes a
witness to the 1923 Rosewood massacre. The supporting cast includes Don Cheadle as Sylvester, who
also became witness to the atrocities, and Jon Voight as a white store owner who inhabits a village near
Rosewood. The three characters become entangled in a desperate attempt to save whomever they can
from the rage of the racist whites of Rosewood. Although focused on an actual historical occurrence,
much of the film is fiction.
8. Students of Change Los de 68 (2009)
29 minutes
Directed by Marta Sanchez and Mario Zavaleta
In 1968, a group of Mexican-American youth left Yakima Valley and entered the University of
Washington. This documentary is the universal story of overcoming social and economic obstacles.
9. Tacoma Civil Rights Project (2008)
44 minutes
Directed and Produced by Sidney Lee
The film features interviews with a dozen participants in Tacoma’s civil rights struggle, including former
mayor Harold Moss.
SHOWING OF Waiting for Superman will begin on October 8, 2010
(2009) 102 minutes
Directed and Produced by Davis Guggenheim
Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather
than encourages, academic growth. Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of American public
education, surveying “drop-out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system
and its seemingly intractable problems.