Past Events

Michael Taussig is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. His extensive fieldwork has spanned topics of slavery; hunger; commodity fetishism; the impact of colonialism on folk healing; the relevance of modernism and post-modernist aesthetics for the understanding of ritual; and the making, talking, and writing of terror.

Quickly becoming one of the hottest documentary directors working today, Alex Gibney turns his lens in Gonzo toward Hunter S. Thompson, one of the icons of the American margins. Utilizing nearly every tool available to the medium, Gibney weaves together found footage, re-enactment, and interviews to create a convincing and compelling portrait of the film's larger-than-life subject.

Anna Deavere Smith's work in the theater explores American character and national identity by combining the journalistic technique of interviewing subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance.

War Dance follows a group of Ugandan school children competing in an annual nationwide dance competition. As the group works its way toward the championship, the film weaves each child’s biography together with performance footage.

Worlds collide and tempers flare when Mr. Vig, an 82-year-old recluse who has never known love, and Sister Amvrosija, a headstrong nun, join forces to transform Mr. Vig's run-down castle into a Russian Orthodox Monastery.

One of the most influential and acclaimed investigative reporters of the past 50 years, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh commands respect for his ongoing and incisive examinations of the abuse of power in the name of national security.

During this lecture and screening, Mr. Dimitrijevic defines film kinesthesia as a “specifically sensual” sensation of the unique phenomenon of movement in film, representing a feeling of movement within us caused by the sensations from the screen. This is a psychological-motor reaction of our bodies caused by the movements on the screen. Mr. Dimitrijevic claims that movies can bring back the aesthetic essence of film to the sensual, kinesthetic organization of movement by means of editing.

Refugee All Stars follows a group of musicians living in a refugee camp in Sierra Leone as they come together to form an impromptu touring group, composing songs that reflect the experiences of refugees in the camps.

Tony Lawson is on the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge. He is organizer of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group and the Cambridge Realist Workshop, and was Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies for many years. Professor Lawson is hosted by the Department of Philosophy while at Berkeley.

Panel Discussants: Quentin Skinner, Shannon Stimson (Political Science), Susan Maslan (French)
Moderator: Anthony J. Cascardi (Townsend Center Director)