Forum to Feature Foreign Films

Purdue University's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures is offering movie lovers a trio of international cinema through the 2007 World Film Forum. All three events will take place at 5 p.m. at the West Lafayette Public Library, 208 West Columbia Street, West Lafayette. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

The forums will take place tomorrow (5 September), 17 October and 7 November, featuring films from Japan, Italy and China, said Silvia Oliveira, an assistant professor of Portuguese and Spanish. All the films, which are free and open to the public, have English subtitles, and Purdue professors will introduce the films and lead a discussion after them.

The movies and speakers are:

* Tomorrow - Kazumi Hatasa, a professor of Japanese, will present "Face of Jizo" (Chichi to Kuraseba, 2004). The film, directed by Kazuo Kuroki, is about a young librarian who struggles with survivor's guilt three years after the atomic blast destroyed Hiroshima.

* 17 October - Elena Coda, an assistant professor of Italian, will present "Excellent Cadavers" (In Un Altro Paese, 2005). This documentary, directed by Marco Turco, tells the story of the big mafia trial that resulted in the 1992 assassinations of the first Sicilian prosecutors to take on the mafia and win. The film explores the current relationship between the mafia and Italian politics.

* 7 November - Weijie Song, an assistant professor of Chinese, will present "To Live" (Huozhe, 1994). This film, by award-winning director Zhang Yimou, covers the experiences of a small family that loses its wealth in the 1940s to the 1970s.