Thursday, November 19, 2009

[HvEXAS] REMINDER: EMPAC | Unfiction: "Examined Life" screening with talk by director Astra Taylor | TONIGHT at 7:30 PM

(Please forward to your students / colleagues - Astra Taylor will be
on-hand to speak about the film after the screening.)

http://www.empac.rpi.edu/events/2009/fall/unfiction/examined/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=155326298811&ref=mf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zwmum5_ofU (the trailer for the film!)

Unfiction series
Examined Life
Directed by Astra Taylor
With Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Judith Butler, Kwame
Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, and
Sunaura Taylor
Produced by Ron Mann, Zeitgeist Films

Thursday November 19 at 7:30 PM
Studio 2
$5 general admission
Curated by Emily Zimmerman

On Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 7:30 P.M. in Studio 2, the Curtis R.
Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) will host
a screening of "Examined Life", Astra Taylor's exhilarating group
portrait of eight contemporary philosophers. The screening will be
followed by a talk with filmmaker Astra Taylor.

Taking philosophy out of the classroom and putting it back on the
street (which, after all, is where philosophy began), "Examined Life"
places the viewer in conversation with some of the most important
thinkers of our time. And it situates those thinkers in environments
that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer
talks about the ethics of consumption while strolling among Fifth
Avenue's posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek visits a garbage dump to
question our beliefs about the environment. Judith Butler critiques
our fixation with individualism in what may be individualism's Mecca,
the Mission District of San Francisco. And while driving through
Manhattan, Cornel West compares philosophy to jazz and the blues in
its power to bring the mind alive. "Ideas beam out from Astra Taylor's
engaging new philoso-doc," says The Village Voice's J. Hoberman. "The
viewer basks in the intelligence on-screen and, occasionally, soaks up
the rays."

Featuring Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony
Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler
and Sunaura Taylor.

Astra Taylor is a writer and documentary filmmaker whose work explores
the intersection of ideas with the "real worlds" of politics,
international development, and human rights. Her films include The
Miracle Tree: Moringa Oleifera; Persons of Interest, an official
selection at the 2004 Sundance, Rotterdam, and Human Rights Watch film
festivals and winner of the Amnesty International Humanitarian Award
at the Chicago International Documentary Film Festival, and Zizek! One
of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces to Watch" of 2006, Taylor
currently runs Hidden Driver Productions with Laura Hanna.

Unfiction is a series of documentary films that turn truth into
something more than fact, using poetry and imagination rather than
transparency and objectivity. Their filmmakers question the very
notion of authenticity and disregard the typical documentary
filmmaking practices. Instead, they stage their own realities on
location, employing techniques such as reenactment, personal voice-
over, and special effects.

Tickets are required for this event and can be purchased for $5.
Parking for this event is available in the Rensselaer parking lot on
College Avenue.

Additional event information can be found on the EMPAC website, http://www.empac.rpi.edu
.

Questions? Call the EMPAC Box Office: 518.276.3921

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