Cornell Cinema welcomes filmmaker Kyle Henry and the McCollege Tour, a traveling package of two video documentaries about the current state of higher education. Henry will present both his own film, "University Inc.," and Laura Dunn's "The Subtext of a Yale Education" Friday, Feb. 18, at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. General admission is $4.50; students will be offered a reduced ticket price of $3.
This two-video package has been touring colleges around the country for the past several months, provoking discussion, dissension and hopeful community building among those who wish to see the university play a more vital and humanitarian role in the 21st century. Each film confronts the commercialization of education but examines different consequences at different institutions.
Dunn's "The Subtext of a Yale Education" (31 minutes) chronicles a year in labor strikes at Yale and documents both economic and philosophical disparities of an undergraduate education at one of the wealthiest universities in the fourth poorest city in the United States. Examining the responsibilities of a university to its workers and to the surrounding community, Dunn uses the style of a personal essay to juxtapose voices from Yale's administration, student population and staff in a dialogue that suggests more questions than answers.
Henry's "University Inc." (54 minutes) deals with the closing of a repertory film program as a paradigm for interrogating the corporate ideology now guiding the nation's largest public university, the University of Texas-Austin.
Mixing personal, experimental and documentary techniques in a provocative collage, Henry challenges audiences to form their own opinions about the economic and moral considerations now guiding the decision-making at many institutions.
The goal of both films is to incite audience engagement and dialogue, and Henry will facilitate a discussion after the screening.
This stop on the McCollege Tour is co-sponsored with the Cornell Organization for Labor Action.
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