SU To Host ‘Brazilian Groove’

SALISBURY -- Salisbury University is planning to celebrate the unique culture of Brazil during its “Brazilian Groove” film series this fall.

Screenings are 7 p.m. Mondays, Sept. 17-Oct. 29, in the Great Hall of Holloway Hall. The following is a look at what the series will offer to attendees.

(BULLET)Sept. 17: “Brazil: A Racial Paradise?” Executive producer and renowned professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. delves behind the façade of Carnival to discover how the “rainbow nation” is waking up to its legacy as the world’s largest slave community.

(BULLET)Sept. 24 and Oct. 1: “Wasteland”. Filmed over a three-year period, this documentary follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho. There, he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores” — self-designated pickers of recyclable materials — who begin to re-imagine their lives while creating images of themselves out of trash.

(BULLET)Oct. 8: “On Wheels Brazil”. Countless people in Brazil make their living as self-employed workers, driving a parallel economy that represents some 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. This film portrays the daily lives of characters who push, pull or pedal some kind of vehicle to earn their living.

(BULLET)Oct. 15: “Frontline: World IX: The Carbon Hunters”. Reporter Mark Schapiro visits a number of demonstration projects that explore the promise and potential pitfalls of “carbon offsets” in the Brazilian Amazon in this PBS series.

(BULLET)Oct. 22: “The Transamazonian Highway: Ecology, Pornography and Trauma”. Shot in an on-the-run, semi-documentary, semi-fictional style during the height of Brazil’s military dictatorship, this film follows a truck driver and a prostitute as they traverse the Amazon in search of a living. A live discussion by Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, professor of media arts at Marist College and editor of Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film, follows.

(BULLET)Oct. 29: “Secrets of the Dead: Lost in the Amazon.” An examination of the adventures of Col. Percy Fawcett, who went missing while searching for the Lost City of “Z” in the Brazilian Amazon in 1925, leads experts to believe the rainforest once may have been home to large populations living in sophisticated towns and cities.

Sponsored by the Office of Cultural Affairs, admission is free and the public is invited. For more information call 410-543-6271 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.