CLC hosts spring international film series

Four international films will be presented for free on Friday nights this spring by the College of Lake County Center for International Education. The films begin at 7 p.m. in Room A162 in the Anderson lecture hall on the CLC Grayslake Campus, 19351 W. Washington St.

The spring semester films are: "Manakamana" Feb. 6, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" March 6, "Neighboring Sounds" April 3 and "The Hunt" May 1. The films have subtitles when necessary, include adult content and are not suitable for children.

• "Manakamana" (USA/Nepal, 2013), Feb. 6. In the 1990s, a cable car was built to simplify pilgrimages to a Hindu temple in the mountains of Nepal: the journey now takes 10 minutes, instead of three days. Filmmakers from Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab mounted cameras for a series of trips to observe the passengers. The result yields great beauty from its simple premise, as well as many rewards for adventurous viewers.

• "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" (Turkey, 2011), on March 6. A prisoner leads investigators through the Turkish steppes in search of a corpse he may have put there. Soon, the relationship between crushing bureaucracy and personal obsession is exposed and explored. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year for "Winter Sleep," and "Anatolia" won their Jury Prize in 2011.

• "Neighboring Sounds" (Brazil, 2012), April 3. Residents of an apartment block in Recife are already on edge when a security company suddenly offers their services, but their mysterious arrival seems only to cause more chaos. First time director Kleber Mendonca Filho masters the sound design and widescreen composition of a great thriller, but the results are more human and unpredictable than any genre film could deliver.

• "The Hunt" (Denmark, 2013), May 1. Acclaimed filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg ("The Celebration") and actor Mads Mikkelsen ("Casino Royale," "Hannibal") collaborate on this gripping nightmare: a teacher's life unravels as a child's casual, false claim of child abuse is pursued by school and police investigators. Likening the results to "The Crucible," Joe Morgensetern of The Wall Street Journal called this "filmmaking of a high order." The film was nominated for last year's Foreign Language Oscar, while Mikkelsen's performance won at Cannes.

For more information, contact Chris Cooling, CLC film instructor, at (847) 543-2623 or ccooling@clcillinois.edu, or visit the series' Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CLCInternationalFilmSeries.