Foreign film series opens Friday at ECC
Screen the best in foreign cinema this fall during the Elgin Community College Humanities Center’s International Film Series.
Held the first and second Friday of each month, the series is part of the center’s effort to foster cross-cultural understanding through cinema.
Screenings are held in the Arts Center, Building H, Room H142 on the ECC Spartan Drive campus, 1700 Spartan Drive, Elgin. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted to help support ECC study-abroad scholarships.
For more information about the film series, visit eccifs.org.
Ÿ “Man on a Mission” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Sept. 7 and 14. This film offers an intimate view of space travel through the eyes of Richard Garriott, a computer-game mogul seeking to follow in his astronaut father’s intergalactic footsteps. Disqualified by NASA for nearsightedness, Garriott paid millions to travel on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft on its journey to the International Space Station. Viewers will watch Garriott’s every step as he endures months of intensive training at the former Soviet Star City to varied weightless adventures in space as he completes his quest.
Ÿ “How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?” will be shown at 7:30 p.m., Fridays, Oct. 5 and 12. A portrait of one of the world’s premier architects, this film follows Norman Foster’s unending quest to improve the quality of life through design. By investigating his origins to how his dreams and influences inspired the design of emblematic projects such as the world’s largest building to its tallest bridge, Foster offers some striking solutions to humanity’s increasing demand on urban centers.
Ÿ “Surviving Progress” will be shown at 7:30 p.m., Fridays, Nov. 2 and 9. Based on the best-selling book, “A Short History of Progress,” this provocative documentary explores the concept of progress in our modern world, guiding us through a sweeping but detailed survey of the major “progress traps” facing our civilization in the arenas of technology, economics, consumption, and the environment. Leading critics of Wall Street, cognitive psychologists, and ecologists lay bare the consequences of progress-as-usual as the film travels around the world — from a burgeoning China to the disappearing rain forests of Brazil to a chimp research lab in New Iberia, Louisiana — to construct a shocking overview of the way our global economic system is eating away at our planet’s resources and shackling entire populations with poverty.