For those who missed it, Wesleyan offered a host of arts events last year for students interested in film, ancient art, theater, and other media.
Opportunities for film lovers at Wesleyan have always been numerous, but with the opening of the new Center for Film Studies (CFS) last year, those opportunities have multiplied. Last fall, the building’s inaugural event featured a visit from one of the gods of film, Martin Scorsese. Scorsese lectured on Elia Kazan’s “America, America” and engaged in a Q-&-A session with the audience. Six of Scorsese’s films, including “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” and “Three by Scorsese,” a collection of his student films, were screened in the CFS’s state-of-the-art theater.
Also last fall the CFS began its “Celebrating the Liberal Arts Tradition through Film” program, a four-semester series of lectures and screenings that will continue in the spring semester. Events from last fall include “HBO Sundays,” two lectures on the artistry of HBO’s television series with a screening of a Six Feet Under episode, a screening of the acclaimed documentary “Stone Reader” and a discussion with its director Mark Moskowitz; and a two-evening showcase of experimental films.
Wesleyan students intending to hit the books in the library last fall may have been
distracted by ancient art being practiced nearby. The monks of Drepung Loseling monastery in southern India visited Middletown in September and spent four full days creating a Mandala, or pattern with Buddhist significance, grain by grain out of colored sand in the lobby of Olin Library. The visit was part of a national tour by the monks meant to spread peace and harmony in a broken, post-9/11 world. After many hours of toil, the project ended with the sand swept into an urn and taken, in a town-wide procession, to the Connecticut River. There it was thrown into the water, a symbol of the ephemeral nature of beauty in the world, and a method of spreading the peaceful energies of the Mandala to other lands.
Living Theater, a company founded in 1947 on the basis of teaching beautiful, nonviolent anarchism, visited Wesleyan last spring in order to provide students with perspective on the importance of give-and-take in political discussions. Sponsored by the Wesleyan club, Silence, the company ran a two-day workshop that involved overtly political exercises and theater games to promote listening and community. The workshop culminated with the performance of a final creative and interpretive piece, showcasing solidarity with the cafeteria workers who were then petitioning for better benefits packages, at MoCon the evening of Sunday April 3. Reactions from the dining crowd were mixed, but student organizers said that they considered the workshop, and its accompanying final piece a success due to its thought provoking subject matter.
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