Global Film Links Film Program for High School Groups

Teachers, offer your high school students opportunities to study and discuss identity, culture, and narrative perspective as expressed in a feature film from a developing nation. Advance registration is required.

To schedule this program for your class, or for more information, call (614) 688-3986 or email scasto@wexarts.org.

Teachers can choose either of two films as a basis for their students' Global Film Links experience: Brazilian director Renato Falc„o's Margarette's Feast, shown on Wednesday, April 21, or Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi's Ticket to Jerusalem, shown on Thursday, April 29. Morning and afternoon screenings are available for each film.

Students and teachers come to the Wexner Center's Film/Video Theater to view the film, which will be introduced by film scholar Ron Green, a professor at Ohio State. The program also features follow-up discussion and activities and an in-class visit by Wexner Center staff. In addition, participating teachers receive extensive curriculum materials developed by the Global Film Initiative (organizer of this touring program) in conjunction with The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Margarette's Feast, a wordless film, uses pantomime, Brazilian instrumental music, and occasional slapstick to tell the tale of Pedro, a husband who dreams of throwing his wife a fancy birthday party. After being fired from his job in a car factory, Pedro embarks on a surreal journey into financial excess, violence, murder, and corruption. Margarette's Feast prompts discussions of alternative visual languages in film, as well as issues of poverty.

Ticket to Jerusalem follows a Palestinian film projectionist determined to illegally screen cartoons for children on an open-air patio in East Jerusalem. Offering a glimpse of everyday life in Gaza and the West Bank, this film provides an occasion to explore current issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Global Film Links is presented in conjunction with the nationally touring film series Global Lens: New Cinema from the Developing World, organized by the Global Film Initiative and screening at the Wexner Center in April. The Global Film Initiative, which is based in New York, promotes cross-cultural dialogue through film programs.