filmmaker Shamim Sarif in LA at USC

SCA Events

Oct 21, 2008
Special screening of I CAN'T THINK STRAIGHT and THE WORLD UNSEEN
Time: 7:00PM - 10:30PM
Location: George Lucas Building, Room 108, 850 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
make reservations »

The USC School of Cinematic Arts invites you to a special double-feature showcasing two new films by emerging Indian filmmaker Shamim Sarif:

I Can't Think Straight & The World Unseen

7:00PM on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

George Lucas Building, Room 108
850 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007

Both films will be projected from a DVD.

Free to the public, open to all.


MAKE A RESERVATION

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

7:00PM: I Can't Think Straight (2007), directed by Shamim Sarif, 80min.
8:30PM: Q&A with director Shamim Sarif, producer Hanan Kattan and actress Sheetal Sheth
9:00PM: The World Unseen (2007), directed by Shamim Sarif, 94min., rated PG-13.

ABOUT I CAN'T THINK STRAIGHT

I Can’t Think Straight focuses on the relationship between the spirited Christian Tala (Lisa Ray) and the shy Muslim Leyla (Sheetal Sheth) and the trouble that their love affair causes for them and their families. Tala, a London-based Palestinian, prepares for an elaborate wedding with her fiancé, when she encounters Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend Ali. The two women could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate. Tala’s feisty nature provokes Leyla out of her shell and soon both women reveal their feelings for each other.

I Can't Think Straight will be released by Regent Releasing and here! Films in Los Angeles on Friday, November 24th, 2008.

To learn more about the film, visit www.icantthinkstraightfilm.com

ABOUT THE WORLD UNSEEN

In 1950's South Africa, apartheid is just beginning. Free-spirited Amina (Sheetal Sheth) has broken all the rules of her own conventional Indian community in South Africa by running a café, a safe haven of laughter, music and home-cooked food; a ‘grey area’ for those who fall outside the strict ‘black and white’ rules of the apartheid-led government.

Miriam (Lisa Ray) is a doting mother to her children and a demure and subservient wife to her chauvinistic, frustrated husband, Omar. Quietly intelligent, Miriam has never assumed that she may have choices in life.

When Miriam meets Amina, their unexpected attraction throws them both off balance. Although Miriam manages to subdue her fascination with unconventional Amina, she finds herself slowly inspired to confront familiar and familial constraints. Shortly after their encounter, Miriam moves to an isolated life in the country, but even here apartheid is placing its cruel footprint on society, and these injustices bring the two women together again, cementing the basis of their growing feelings.

Using the stunning South African landscape and jazz tunes of the time, The World Unseen explores a system that divides white from black and women from men, but one that might just allow an unexpected love to survive.

The World Unseen will be released by Regent Releasing in Los Angeles on Friday, November 7th, 2008.

To learn more about the film, visit www.theworldunseenfilm.com

ABOUT THE GUESTS


From never having been on a film set before to being the driving creative force behind not one, but two full-length motion pictures due for release in the same month, Shamim Sarif and Hanan Kattan have achieved goals beyond their wildest dreams.

Sarif made waves in the literary world when her first novel, The World Unseen, was published to critical acclaim. Sarif subsequently adapted the screenplay for the feature film of The World Unseen, which she also directed, but not before making her directorial debut with I Can’t Think Straight, another of her novels that she adapted for the screen. Both films will be released in the US and Canada during November 2008.

Written, directed, financed and produced almost entirely by women, both films are Enlightenment Productions movies produced by Sarif’s business and life partner Hanan Kattan, starring Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth.

Commenting on the all-female team, Kattan says: “There was a lot of passion, a lot of positive emotions and a lot of multi-tasking and co-operation.

“Both our projects happened to attract a lot of women, from producers to heads of departments, and it is a blessing to work with so many talented and passionate women who have integrity and who deeply understand the messages and stories being told."

With a longstanding business and personal relationship, Sarif and Kattan combine forces as a powerful symbiotic team.

To learn more about Englightenment Productions, visit www.enlightenment-productions.com

Sheetal Sheth burst onto the scene in her debut film, ABCD, a risky and controversial role as a promiscuous young girl struggling with the ties of family and tradition. She paved un-chartered territory by being at the forefront of a film revolution starring in five festival-winning films by and starring first generation South Asian Americans. She broke out as the female lead in Shangri-La Entertainment’s film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, starring, written and directed by Albert Brooks. She won the Best Actress Award at the Cinevue Film Festival for her work in Wings of Hope and American Chai won the Audience Award at the Slamdance Film Festival. In addition to I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen, Sheth has appeared in Dancing in Twilight, The Trouble with Romance and the forthcoming films First Fear and Why am I Doing This?

ABOUT CHECK-IN & RESERVATIONS

Doors will open at approximately 6:00PM. Guests may check in at the reservations desk under their last name. We kindly ask that you not bring food or drink into the theater.

ABOUT PARKING

The George Lucas Building is located at 850 W. 34th St., Los Angeles, CA 90007. Parking passes may be purchased for $8.00 at USC Entrance Gate #5, located at the intersection of W. Jefferson Blvd. & McClintock Avenue. We recommend parking in outdoor Lot M or V, or Parking Structure D, at the far end of 34th Street. Please note that Parking Structure D cannot accommodate tall vehicles such as SUVs. Street parking is also available along W. Jefferson Boulevard (meters are free after 6:00PM).

For a map of the USC campus (Norris Cinema Theatre, NCT, is N.10 in blue), please access the following website: http://www.usc.edu/assets/maps/upc_map.pdf

CFP: "Serve the People"

The Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California is pleased to announce the call for papers for this year's Crossing Borders Ethnic Studies Conference. Now in its 7th year, Crossing Borders has served as a meeting ground for graduate student conversations across institutional and disciplinary lines in the field of Ethnic Studies.



8th Annual Crossing Borders Ethnic Studies Conference
Serve the People: Ethnic Studies Between Theory and Praxis
University of Southern California, March 6-8, 2009

Call for Proposals

The 8^th annual Crossing Borders Conference, hosted by the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, coincides with the 40-year anniversary of the killings of UCLA students John Huggins and Bunchy Carter. On January 17th, 1969, these two student activists and leaders of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party were shot during an ideological dispute regarding the direction of new Black Studies department. Their life work symbolizes a particular direction and hope for an Ethnic Studies that engaged with the anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-war movements gaining momentum in communities around the world. Huggins and Carter, as participants in the pilot UCLA High Potential program, saw the university as a critical site for enacting their political commitments.

Huggins and Carter were a part of a larger movement rooted in local communities that maintained an internationalist perspective. These analytics emerged within a context of world-wide events which continue to reverberate within Ethnic Studies: the war in Southeast Asia, the decolonization of Africa, world-wide student protests in the late 1960s, people of color power movements, the Non-Aligned Movement comprised of and led mostly by former colonies, the New Left movement, sexual revolutions, the Gay Liberation movement, and women's movements. In this context, the 1968 Third World Liberation Front student strike at San Francisco State University led to the formation of Ethnic Studies. As a rare intellectual tradition whose roots are in confronting and transforming power, this history has deeply informed our trajectory of knowledge production and the questions we continue to ask. Yet, the founding of Ethnic Studies was also met with the inception of new technologies of discipline, an intensified era of state monitored anti-insurgency, and the inability of revolutionary visions to pay attention to issues such as gender and sexuality.

Forty years later, with the institutionalization of Ethnic Studies on university campuses, how do we make sense of our inheritance? How do we radically envision what engaged scholarship means? How do we understand questions of community engagement and commitment to social justice? How do we honor our legacies without positing a binary between theory and practice, nor uncritically glorifying old models of engaged work? With communities increasingly being defined in complex ways, how do we mount effective interventions? What are the ways in which Ethnic Studies scholars can reckon with our history and the contradictions inherent in the multiple interstices of our existences?

Keeping in mind the relationship between theory and praxis of community scholarship, we invite proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables from graduate students who address these questions through one or more of the following broad topics: race, gender, and law, globalization, transnationalism, immigration, diaspora, gender and sexuality, space and spatiality, social movements, community organizing, electoral politics, surveillance and practices of viewing, education, radical pedagogy, and cultural production (music, film, art, literature, etc.).

Submissions

We welcome submissions for panels, individual papers, and roundtable discussion. Panels should consist of 3-4 presenters, and 1 discussant, who may also be a presenter. Roundtables should consist of 4-6 slated participants who will briefly present their material and engage the audience in dialogue, and one chair who will introduce the topic and facilitate discussion. Individual papers will be considered, but priority will be given to prearranged panels.

Submission guidelines: Individual submissions must include: a 1) 250-word paper abstract and 2) a curriculum vitae. Panel presentations must include: 1) a 250-word description of the panel and 2) 250-word abstracts for each paper, and 3) a curriculum vitae for each presenter and the discussant. Roundtable submissions should include: 1) a 1-2 page description of the proposed discussion and 2) curriculum vitae for each slated participant.

Please note that all proposals must be compiled into one Microsoft Word document and sent to crossingborders09@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission: January 2, 2009