Lunchtime Lecture Series
Tuesday 28 October, Aston Webb Rotunda, 1-2pm
Hannah Arendt: Politics and ‘Dark Times’
Dr Steve Buckler- Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham
The lecture will examine the work of the German political theorist Hannah Arendt who made an influential contribution to the study of totalitarianism and who developed a distinctive conception of politics that was intended as a response to the vulnerability to oppression that we experience in ‘dark times’.
Click here to get information on the Series.
Film Screenings
Wednesday 29.10.08, The Rainbow, 160 High Street,
Digbeth, 7 pm
La Vita è bella, (Life is Beautiful) Italy 1999
Winner of three academy awards Best Actor, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Original Dramatic Score. A moving and poignant tale of one father's sacrifice to save not just his young son's life but his innocence. This is the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice who comes to the Tuscan town of Arezzo in 1939. He falls in love with Dora, a beautiful young schoolteacher and a fairytale romance ensues. Several years later the occasional bigotries Guido once ignored have become Racial Laws. Throughout it all, he determines to shield his son from the brutal reality governing their lives.
This determination becomes a matter of life and death when Guido and his son are sent to a concentration camp three months before the war’s end. Of her own accord Dora deports herself on the same train. Now, in this unimaginable world, Guido must use his bold imagination and every ounce of his indefatigable spirit to save those he loves.
See the full programme here.