A Time to Stir Series: 1968: An International Perspective [April 29-May 14] Director: Paul Cronin, Release: 2008, Runtime: 120 (screening & panel discussion)
Filmmaker Paul Cronin (Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16) presents excerpts from his upcoming film on the spring ‘68 Columbia student strikes. “A Time to Stir features new interviews with leading players of a wide variety of persuasions,” says Cronin, “including SDS students who occupied four buildings on campus, African-American students who were gathered on their own in Hamilton Hall, older politically active graduate students who took issue with SDS leadership, Columbia students who opposed the takeover of campus by protesters, faculty both for and against the activists and the Tactical Patrol Force who cleared the buildings on the orders of the university administration.” Following the screening, Richard Peña will moderate a special panel discussion on the film featuring participants in the Columbia events including Thulani Davis, Carolyn Rusti Eisenberg, Richard Forzani, Tom Hurwitz, Mark Jacobson and Allan Silver.
Panelists:
Columbia graduate Thulani Davis is a widely praised writer on politics and the arts, as well as the co-author of the libretto for Anthony Davis' opera X.
A student at Columbia in 1968, Carolyn Rusti Eisenberg is currently a professor of U.S. foreign policy at Hofstra University. She is in anti-war efforts, helping to found Brooklyn for Peace and serving as a national coordinator for Congressional work on the Iraq War.
Like many of his of peers, Columbia student Richard Forzani opposed the 1968 occupation of campus and helped organize a non-violent blockade of Low Library to encourage the occupiers to vacate. Forzani graduated from Columbia in 1969 and is currently a director of sales for a start-up software company. He is also a Navy veteran.
One of America’s most highly regarded documentary cinematographers, Tom Hurwitz participated in the Columbia strike of 1968 and helped to organize the recent 40th anniversary conference “Columbia 1968-08.”
A student at Berkeley in 1968, New York Magazine contributing editor Mark Jacobson covered the youth movement of the late ‘60s in his 2007 feature article in “Long Hot Summer of Love.” His article “The Return of Superfly” was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film, American Gangster.
Professor Allan Silver has taught at Columbia University since 1964 and was among the faculty members who sought a non-violent way out of the crisis brought on by the 1968 strikes. He is a professor of sociology, with emphasis on politics.
Moderator:
Richard Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. A graduate of Harvard and M.I.T., Richard Peña is an associate professor of film at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema.
