Upcoming Films from the Middle East

On behalf of the Committee for Middle Eastern Studies at Wesleyan University, we would like to invite you to the Middle Eastern Film Series, which includes the following films:

Wednesday, November 4, The Band’s Visit, a film from Israel
Wednesday, November 11, The Extras, a film from Syria
Wednesday, November 18, Dunya, a film from Egypt.

All films will be screened at PAC 001 at 7pm. Admission is free.


The first film from Israel, “The Band’s Visit,” is about an Egyptian band that came to Israel to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center in a major Israeli city, but by mistake the band arrives at an isolated village where as one of the villagers informs them, “there is no Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all.”
The film won the official Cannes Festival selection as well as 8 Israeli academy awards. It is 90 minutes with English subtitles.


Next semester the Jewish and Israel Studies Certificate Program will present the Israeli Film Festival, please check for updates here or on the Jewish and Israel Studies Certificate Program’s website http://www.wesleyan.edu/jis for updates.

Upcoming lectures in the fall semester

We have reached the “midterm” period.  Israel and Jewish Studies Certificate Program has hosted several lectures and events, in September, Professor Lawrence Fine gave a lecture “We are bound to one another as if we were one person: Spiritual Friend”.

In early October, we hosted an event “Rembering Vilna.”  A new documentary, “The World Was Ours,” on pre-war and wartime Vilna by Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren was screened. Following the film, in a musical interlude, vocalist Maria Krupoves sang songs of the Vilna Ghetto. The program also included a panel discussion by Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren, Executive Producer, and the director of The Vilna Project; Professor Samuel Kassow, Trinity College; and Dr. Michael Good, author of “The Search for Major Plagge”. The event was also made possible by a gift from the Denise and Gary Rosenberg Fund.

And just this week, Michael Morgan, Chancellor Professor of Philosophy & Jewish Studies, Emeritus, at Indiana University  spoke on “Messianism, Israel, and Judaism in America”. The event was co-sponsored by College of Letters and Jewish and Israel Studies Certificate Program.

For the remainder of the semester we have several exciting events:
Thursday, October 29, Loren Spielman, our visiting instructor in the Religion Department, will speak on Gladiators and God-fearers: Jewish and Christian Reactions to Sport and Spectacle, at 4:15pm in PAC 421

Thursday, November 4, Professor Sara Lipton will lecture on “Becoming Visual: The Emergence of the Visible Jewess in Later Medieval Art,”  at 4:15 at PAC 001. Professor Lipton is the author of Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisee, which won the John Nicholas Brown Prize for Best First Book and was a finalist for the Koret Jewish History Book Prize.  The lecture is based on her new book Dark Mirror: Jews, Vision, and Witness in Medieval Art (forthcoming from Metropolitan Books).  The lecture breaks new ground in the study of medieval Jewish and Christian history, visual evidence, and Christian theology. The event is co-sponsored by Jewish & Israel Studies Certificate Program, History Department, & Medieval Studies.

On Thursday, November 11, Dan Bahat, a leading Israeli Archaeologist and a member of the Faculty of the University of St. Michael’s College at the School of Theology, University of Toronto, will discuss his research with us.  4:15, 118 Downey House.

We hope you will join us!