Llista de notícies

From 3 to 17 December, the Cerveró Palace of the Universitat de València will host on Thursdays a brief exhibition of films which will allow to review some moments and key characters in medicine and ancient science history, from Hipatia to Giordano Bruno. 

The programme of ‘Cinema en Valencià’, organised by the Language Policy Service of the Universitat, starts this Thursday 3 December, with ‘Falciani’s Tax Bomb’ and will continue with ‘Still Alice’.

From today: ‘En tierra extraña: la inmigración del cine francés’

During December, the Cinema club presents, in the Assembly Hall of the Rector Peset Hall of Residence, a cycle of French movies which reflect about immigration and cultural frontiers, which very frequently are so difficult to avoid like physical frontiers between nations. A proposal within the activities organised by the Universitat de València on the occasion of ‘Diciembre Europeo: las fronteras en Europa’ (European December: Frontiers in Europe), a debate, exhibition, cinema and concerts programme which aims to encourage debate about the future of Europe as a common space for cultural and social exchange.

The cycle opens today, Tuesday 2 December, with the projection of ‘Toni’ (1935), the masterpiece of Jean Renoir around the illusions and hopes of a group of immigrants who arrive in the depressed Provence region looking for a job. A film that heralded, because of its aesthetic choices, its social commitment and its humanist perspective, the neorealism pathway that Italian cinema would follow ten years later. 

Tuesday 15 will be the turn of ‘Unknown Code’ (Code Inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages, 2000), French-German co-production starred by Juliette Binoche and directed by the Austrian Michael Haneke. In this film, the cineaste shown one more time his lucidity to reveal the invisible walls in contemporary Europe and to track the signs of a violence silenced under the normality of our daily life. Finally, ‘Silence of Lorna’ (Le Silence de Lorna, 2008), the perspective of Dardenne brothers on the turbid story around marriages of convenience, will close Tuesday 22.

The cycle will be complemented with a programme of short films and three full-length film dealing with the same topic offered by the Institut Français of Valencia along December in their projection room: the drama ‘Eastern Boys’ (Robin Campillo, 2013), around the young immigrants who survive in Paris engaging in prostitution; ‘Chronicles of the Playground’ (Brahim Fritah, 2013), a comedy around economic relocation and its consequences; and ‘The Disintegration’ (Philippe Faucon, 2011), an analysis on social exclusion and its link with the boost of jihadism inside European frontiers.

Medicine and Ancient Sciences

Medicine and modern science emerge, for many historians, from a long process comprised between the XVII and XVIII centuries. The progress in that period are a clear breaking with the suppositions and methods practices until then. Other historiographic trends discuss that the ‘revolution’ experienced by science at that time was so radical, and question that it produce a real breaking between the intellectual development in the Middle Age and the discoveries or contributions of Renaissance, Baroque or the Illustration. 

The knowledge of the medical and scientific practices on previous times is crucial to value to what extent the so called ‘scientific revolution’ supposed the implementation of a new scientific paradigm or, simply, one step more in the line of the scientific progresses which had been happening from the Ancient Period.    With this objective, the Cinema Club presents in December a cycle formed by three full-length films, which will allow the public to immerse into the scientific world of the Ancient Alexandria, Persian medieval medicine or the intellectual circles of Italian Renaissance, a transition period towards modernity. 

Hipatia, one of the first Mathematician women and an important person in the field of astronomy, will be the protagonist on Thursday 3 December, in the session which will open the cycle with the projection of ‘Agora’ (2009). Alejandro Amenábar, scriptwriter and director of the film, narrates the story of this historical character, symbol of wisdom, paganism and women empowerment of this era, who will be victim to the fights of power and religious fundamentalisms of the Alexandria of the V Century A.   D.

On Thursday 10 the cycle will continue with the projection of ‘The Doctor’ (Der Medicus, Philipp Stölzl, 2013). Film adaptation of the homonim novel by Noah Gordon. The film narrates the adventures of a young English boy who decides to emigrate to Persia in order to be trained as a doctor, looking for the best teachers and the scientific advances.  The cycle will be closed on Thursday 17 with the biopic ‘Giordano Bruno (Giuliano Montaldo, 1973), in which Gian Maria Volonté embodies a philosopher and dominical priest whose cosmological theories revolutionize the science of that time and whose separation between the truth of faith and of science earned him the accusation of heresy by the Roman Inquisition.    

‘Cinema in Valencian’ cycle.

Benimaclet Musical opens the programme of ‘Cinema in Valencian’ on Thursday 3 December with ‘Falciani’s Tax Bomb’ in the Centre Instructiu Musical de Benimaclet. This film discovers what has changed in the world economy and politics after Hervé Falciani stole and leaked the bank data of more than 15,000 clients, most of them tax evaders... And on Thursday 10, the magnificent interpreting of Julianne Moor in ‘Still Alice’, in the Cultural and Neighbour Centre of Tres Forques. Free entrance.

For Christmas the Ontinyent Campus also holds this film cycle: ‘What We Did on Our Holiday’ and 'My Old Lady’, both from 23 to 27 December, the awarded animation film ‘Song of the Sea, from 28 December to 3 January and which will continue on 4 January with ‘A perfect day to fly’ (Un dia perfecte per volar) by Marc Recha. In Ontinyent entrance is free with the university card of the Universitat de València (plus one).