"I, the Worst of All," Opens Classic Film Series

"Engrossing, enriching, and elegant!" - Boston Globe

 

"Passionate, riveting, magnificent! One of the year's best!" - New York Post

 

"An erotically charged impassioned work! Assumpta Serna is luminous!" - Village Voice

 

I, THE WORST OF ALL [YO, LA PEOR DE TODAS]
September 19 (Friday)
Film screening — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

 

Directed by María Luisa Bemberg | Argentina, 1990, 105 minutes, color, in Spanish with English subtitles. Starring Assumpta Serna, Dominique Sanda, Héctor Alterio

Based on a biography by Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, this film tells the story of the embattled 17th century nun, Sor Juana, who would come to be regarded as the mother of Mexican literature.

 

Screened in conjunction with an appearance by distinguished translator Edith Grossman (see September 23 Visiting Writers Series listing), who presents her new collection of works by Sor Juana.

 

Strictly Film School review:  http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/bemberg.html

 

More about the film series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#.VBBjWl_D_s0

 

More about our upcoming visit with Edith Grossman, translator into English of Sor Juana, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, Don Quixote, and numerous classics of Spanish literature:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/grossman_edith14.html

 

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The Next Big One, Tonight with David Quammen

"By the Next Big One, I mean a murderous pandemic that sweeps around the planet, killing millions of people, as the so-called 'Spanish' influenza did in 1918-19, as AIDS has been doing in slower motion, and as SARS might have done in 2003 if it hadn’t been stopped by fast science, rigorous measures of public health, and luck. Experts I’ve interviewed over the past six years generally agree that such a Next Big One is not only possible but probable.... From where will the Next Big One emerge? Answer, as I’ve noted: Most likely from wildlife. It will be a zoonosis — an animal infection that spills over into humans."

Read more in Yale Environment 360:  http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/feature.msp?id=2579
Quammen visits today at 4:15 and 8PM in the UAlbany Campus Center:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#david

Photo from the 1918 flu pandemic.

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A Spanish Thanksgiving in St. Augustine, Florida

"Spaniards also held a thanksgiving, 56 years before the Pilgrims, when they feasted near St. Augustine with Florida Indians, probably on stewed pork and garbanzo beans."

"The early history of Spanish North America is well documented, as is the extensive exploration by the 16th-century French and Portuguese. So why do Americans cling to a creation myth centered on one band of late-arriving English — Pilgrims who weren't even the first English to settle New England or the first Europeans to reach Plymouth Harbor? (There was a short-lived colony in Maine and the French reached Plymouth earlier.)"

In the New York Times in 2008, Tony Horwitz, who visits Thursday 11/17, discusses Thanksgiving in light of the current immigration debate, and in light of what we know of Spanish activity in the North America. More.

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