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The University of Delaware’s Spring 2003 International Film Series, featuring 35mm prints exclusively, will take place on Sundays throughout the spring semester. Films, free and open to the public, will be shown at 7:30 pm in the theatre of the Trabant University Center, Main Street and South College Avenue, Newark. All foreign-language films are shown with subtitles. The lineup includes:

March 9–“Waiting for Happines,” a Mauritanian film from 2002, tells the story of a young man who returns to the village of his birth and discovers that he can no longer speak the local dialect. This "gentle and elliptical" film centers on youth out of step with the rhythms of home, Frank Scheck wrote in the Hollywood Reporter.

March 16–“Read My Lips,” a French film produced in 2001, tells the story of a hearing-impaired office worker who enlists an ex-con in her plan to enact revenge on her workplace tormentors. What begins as a comedy of manners evolves into a caper film "rendered with a crisp, idiosyncratic flourish,” according to Geoff Pevere of the Toronto Star.

March 23–“Personal Velocity,” made in the U.S. in 2001, is an adaptation by Rebecca Miller from her own short stories. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance 2002 Film Festival, the plot examines three women (Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk) trying to regain control over the courses of their lives. "One of the finest pictures of the year,” Elvis Mitchell wrote in The New York Times.

April 6–“The Way Home,” produced in South Korea in 2002, is the
story of a bratty boy from the city and his mute grandmother in the country, told with "simplicity, truth and a shimmering grace,"according to Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle.

April 13–“Spirited Away,” a Japanese film made in 2001, was given the coveted, "Two Thumbs up!" by film critics Ebert and Roeper and won top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. This English-language version of master animator Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed film--Japan's highest-grossing film of all time--follows a modern-day Alice lost in a world of spirits. "Prepare to be astonished," Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

April 20–“Unknown Pleasures,” a Chinese film made in 2002, by
Jia Zhang-ke, the director of “Platform” and “Pickpocket,” takes place in the industrial city of Datong, where disaffected youth are tantalized by American culture. Inspired by a Tarantino movie, two friends plot a robbery that does not end well.

April 27–“All or Nothing,” was made in the United Kingdom in 2002 by Mike Leigh (“Secrets and Lies,” “Life is Sweet”). A.O. Scoot of The New York Times called the film a "tableau of extraordinary vividness and variety.” It tells the tale of a beaten-down family that discovers what they're made of one weekend in the projects of South London. "Strong stuff [from] the unsparing poet of the British working class," Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone.

May 4–“The Quiet American,” made in the U.S., Germany and Australia in 2002, depicts Graham Greene's classic 1955 novel about a British journalist covering the last days of French rule in Vietnam and the gung-ho American who is clearly not what he seems. "A towering achievement with a soul-baring performance by Michael Caine," Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone.

The International Film Series is sponsored by the Faculty Senate Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events, the Office of the Provost and the English Department's Film Program, all at UD. For more information, call (302) 831-2361.

Contact: Beth Thomas, (302) 831-8749
Feb. 27, 2003