Agenda UV

The Lopez Piñero Institute for the History of Medicine and Science (joint centre of the CSIC and the University of Valencia), based at the Palau de Cerveró and the Cinema Club of the University of Valencia present the film series ‘El placer de fumar: adicción y negocio’. Thefilm series will start next Thursday 16 May with the screening of the film Smoke (Wayne Wang and Paul Auster, EEUU, 1995). On Thursday 23 it could be watch the film Smoking Room (J.D. Wallowits and Roger Gual, Spain, 2002). And for closing the film series, Thursday 30 May will be screened the film Thank You For Smoking (Jason Reitman, EEUU, 2005).

The screenings, that will take place on Thursdays at 18:00 in the conference room of the Palau de Cerveró, will be in original version with subtitles in Spanish. Each session will have a previous presentation by the Cinema Club of the University of Valencia and by a scientific expert in the subject. Also after the screening it will be open a discussion in which the audience can participate. The film series will deal with the presence of the tobacco in our lives, its consequences and conflictive situations which arise from its use. The use of the tobacco in the cinema world, has affected, without doubt, to the audience and indirectly to the growing of tobacco industry.

In the first session will be screened Smoke. The first cinematographic adventure of Paul Auster, who places the story in the summer of 1987 in the neighborhood of Brooklyn (NY). A group of people frequent the tobacconist of their neighborhood. Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel), the tobacco dealer, is the confidant, of all of them. The incredible story of how he got his camera and why he decided to develop his special collection of pictures, the same frame of the front house during 14 years, will finally give an argument to Paul Benjamin (William Hurt), a prestigious writer in crisis. The vital circle closes when these human contacts involve Auggie in a way that force him to take responsibility respect Ruby (Stockard Channing), an old girlfriend with who he has a daughter (Ashley Judd), who now a teenager, goes through a very difficult time.

On the session of 23 May it will be presented the film Smoking Room. The Spanish branch of an American company is obliged to prohibit smoking inside the offices. From now on, who wish to smoke in working hours, should do it in the street. Ramirez, one of the employees of this small office that consists mostly of men, decides to gather signatures for what he considers unfair. What Ramirez aims is that an empty office could be used as a “Smoking Room”. Apparently, everyone agrees and support him, however, at the moment of truth, all of them will start to use all type of excuses to avoid to be in the list; in contrast, none will have problems to join another list, a list for forming a team to play a football match against the employees of another office.

Finally, on Thursday 30 May, the film series will close with the film Thank You For Smoking that tells the story of Nick Naylor, a Press Officer of a large tobacco company, who devotes his life to defend the smokers’ rights against the neo-puritan cultural life. Facing groups that defend health and an opportunistic senator, Nick goes on offensive like the public relations of cigarette consumption, but at the same time he start to think about the image he is giving to his young son Joey.