Hubert Library to host film festival

Steve Mesa/Staff Writer

In conjunction with Banned Books week, the Glenn Hubert Library will host the Biscayne Bay Campus Banned Book Film Festival, which will showcase two different films on Oct. 6 and Oct. 13: “Before Night Fall” and “I Am Curious (Yellow)”. The films will be shown in Glenn Hubert Library room 150 at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Directed by Julian Schnabel, “Before Night Falls,” based on the autobiography of writer, poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, played by Oscar-winner Javier Bardem, chronicles his life from his childhood in Cuba to his death in New York City.

The movie explores Arenas’ struggles as a renowned writer when his writing and his homosexuality gets him in trouble with Fidel Castro’s Cuban regime. During his two year incarceration, he writes letters for other inmates and smuggles out a novel.

“The film presents one person’s strength and integrity as he stood up to the government’s censorship and oppression,” said Lauren Christos, the reference librarian for the Glenn Hubert Library.

Directed by Vilgot Sjöman, “I Am Curious (Yellow)” is a 1967 Swedish film about a woman, Lena Nyman, of the 60’s who is a political activist that challenges traditional values on the issues of militarism, social equality and sexual liberation.

The film was seized by U.S. Customs and released in the U.S. only after the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling of a lower court in Massachusetts, where the film was originally banned.

“It’s interesting because it shows the fact that the film was appealed and the Court’s overturned it because it was the right decision,” said Christos.

Aside from the Banned Books Film Festival, there are plans for a general film festival to be hosted by the Glenn Hubert Library that would start around the month of November.

“We’ve had library-sponsored film festivals from the late ‘90s to the early ‘00s, but there were a number of problems because of bad equipment and stuff like that,” said George Pearson, BBC librarian.

The films that Pearson would like to showcase in the revitalized film festival includes specific genres like science fiction, as well as films from foreign countries like Japan so that FIU students can be exposed to movies like Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”.

“We are in the planning process now to finalize the film festival and we would probably start with film-noir by showing films like Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity,” Pearson said.