University of Richmond to host international conference highlighting cinema, includes free 3-D film screenings
About 20 scholars from around the world will gather at the University of Richmond beginning Feb. 24 to discuss German filmmaker Wim Wenders’ contributions to the visual arts.
Wenders is a pioneer of the New German Cinema genre and is considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary German film. He also has worked as a scriptwriter, director, producer, photographer and author on many documentary films, international photo exhibitions, film books and prose collections.
Though Wenders has been creating film for 40 years, this conference is the first to bring new scholarship to his body of work and heighten his contributions to cinema.
Olivier Delers, associate professor of French and the chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and Martin Sulzer-Reichel, director of the Arabic Language Program, pursued hosting a conference after creating a seminar for first-year students called “From Berlin to Paris Texas: The Cinema of Wim Wenders.”
“Wenders is such an influential person, and we saw how his work not only helped our students understand visual texts, but also sparked great conversations about cinema,” Delers said. “We were able to take students to New York for the Wenders retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and we knew we wanted to explore his work further.”
The two-day conference incorporates lectures, film screenings at the university and Movieland at Boulevard Square, and a Skype session with Wenders. The following events are free and open to the public:
Film Screening: Ludwigsburg Sinfonie
Presented by director Marcel Wehn
Feb. 22, 7 p.m. ï Whitehurst Living Room
Keynote Address: The Peace Project - Reflections on art, cinema and perception
Mary Zournazi, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales
Feb. 24, 1:45 p.m. ï Carole Weinstein International Center Commons
3-D Film Screenings
“Everything Will Be Fine” and “Pina”
Feb. 25, 9 a.m.-1:15 p.m. ï Movieland at Boulevard Square
1301 North Boulevard Richmond, Va. 23230
Free screenings, but seating is limited. RSVP here.
Skype Conversation with Wim Wenders
Feb. 25, 3 p.m. ï Carole Weinstein International Center Commons
The Wenders conference serves as this year’s Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature and the Arts, which is presented each year by a different humanities department within the School of Arts and Sciences.
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