Cornell Cinema

The Alloy Orchestra performs its newest film score, to Rudolph Valentino's final film, "Son of the Sheik," Nov. 8 at Cornell Cinema.

Film treasures

Cornell Cinema hosts three events Nov. 7-8 with the Alloy Orchestra playing live scores to classic silent films.

Friday, Nov. 7, the 15th anniversary of the orchestra’s first performance at Cornell Cinema, the orchestra reprises its most popular program – a 147-minute restoration of “Metropolis,” Fritz Lang’s 1927 dystopian sci-fi epic, introduced by computer science professor Ross Knepper. Tickets are $14, $12 for students and senior citizens. (A Nov. 9 screening at 4 p.m. will feature a recorded soundtrack for a $5.50 admission price.)

Nov. 8 at 2 p.m., the ensemble will accompany the 1925 dinosaur adventure, “The Lost World,” for ages 7 and up. At 7:15 p.m., they perform their newest score to a digital restoration of “The Son of the Sheik,” Rudolph Valentino’s last film, from 1926. Admission to each Saturday show is $7, $5 for children ages 12 and under.

Tickets usually sell out to these performances; advance tickets are available at CornellCinemaTickets.com.

Traveling show

The Circus for Construction – a project organized by Architecture, Art and Planning alumni and drawing from historic traveling sideshows and food trucks – wraps up its fall tour Nov. 7-8 in Ithaca with a performance, exhibition, panel and other events, free and open to the public.

“Pop-up HipHop,” Nov. 7 at 6 p.m., features breakdancers and filmed projections on the Milstein Hall loading dock. A reception follows at 7 p.m.

The exhibition “Rickhouse: The Architecture of Aging,” as well as the interactive “Human Hamster Wheel,” by artist Rachel Tan, B.Arch. '15, are on display Nov. 8 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. at the Argos Inn, 408 E. State St., Ithaca. A panel at 6 p.m., “Pecha Kucha: Relocating America,” features Christine O'Malley of Historic Ithaca, Jared Jones of EcoVillage, Nick Cheney of Creative Machines Lab and Jason Salfi of Comet Skateboards. A reception and whiskey tasting follows from 7:30-9:30 p.m.

The Circus for Construction roadshow project team is Ashley Mendelsohn ’09, B.Arch. ’10; Ann Lui ’10, B.Arch. ’11; Larisa Ovalles, B.Arch. ’11; Ben Widger, ’07, M.Arch. ’11, and Craig Reschke.

‘Code Black’ in the ER

His experience as a survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma inspired Dr. Ryan McGarry to go to medical school and to bring his “permanent patient’s perspective” to his work as a physician and filmmaker.

His documentary film, “Code Black,” following his and other young doctors’ lives in an embattled inner-city emergency room, will screen Nov. 8 at 5 p.m. at Cinemapolis, Ithaca.

An instructor at Weill Cornell Medical College and attending emergency room physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, McGarry made the film during his four-year residency at Los Angeles County General Hospital. It shows the residents grappling with their idealism and the realities of practicing medicine in an overburdened system.

The film has won several honors, including Best Documentary Feature at the 2013 Los Angeles International Film Festival and 2013 Hamptons International Film Festival, and awards at the 2013 Aspen Film Festival and at the 2013 Denver STARZ Film Festival. It premiered in New York in June. 

‘The Great War’

The commemorative project “Foreign Fields: Perspectives on the Great War” will present “Perspectives: Readings from the Fields of War,” Nov. 10 from 4:30-6:30 p.m. in Olin Library’s Amit Bhatia ‘01 Libe Café. Free and open to the public.

The readings, along with a summer and fall exhibition in Olin Library, explore the cultural and political frontiers of World War I in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the start of the war.

Members of Cornell’s international community, faculty and students will read contemporary excerpts from poems, diary entries, letters, telegrams, plays and news written during the “Great War” in their languages of origin. Professor of performing and media arts Ellen Gainor will emcee the event, and a reception will follow.

Remembering Vietnam

A group of 25 alumni, faculty and staff will return to campus Nov. 10-11 for events commemorating their participation in resistance to the Vietnam War at Cornell in the 1960s.

The reunion, “Vietnam: The War at Cornell,” features panel discussions, a teach-in and classroom visits by ’60s alumni, including members of Students for a Democratic Society and others who occupied buildings, held protests and teach-ins, burned draft cards and worked for civil and women’s rights.

A Teach-In, featuring alumni and community members from the Vietnam era, will be held Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in Uris Hall Auditorium. Forums on “Race and Cornell Protest in the 1960s,” Nov. 10, and “Gender and Cornell Protest in the 1960s,” Nov. 11, start each day at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall.

Events are free and open to the public. The reunion is organized by Professor Isaac Kramnick and presented by the College of Arts and Sciences as part of its celebration of Cornell’s sesquicentennial.

Ebola’s impact

Leading experts will discuss the Ebola pandemic’s impact on the African continent and on the most affected countries – in areas including agriculture, the mining and service industries, trade, and institutional health systems – at a roundtable discussion, Nov. 10 at 4:30 p.m. in B25 Warren Hall. Open to the public.

The event, “Social, Economic and Political Impact of the Ebola Pandemic,” is organized by the Institute for African Development (IAD) and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

IAD Director Muna Ndulo, Cornell Law School professor and adviser to the United Nations, will moderate the discussion. The panelists are Nathaniel Hupert, a disease and disaster preparedness expert and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College; Nicolas van de Walle, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Government at Cornell; Chinua Akukwe, a George Washington University professor, African public health and policy analyst and adviser on global and public health issues; and economist John Panzer of the World Bank’s International Trade Department.

Honoring veterans

Cornell will honor its veterans and military personnel on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 10-11:30 a.m. in Anabel Taylor Hall Auditorium. The celebration is open to the public and will feature a keynote address by U.S. Navy Adm. Michelle J. Howard.

Howard is the highest-ranking African-American in the Navy, and its first female four-star officer. She also was the first African-American woman to command a ship. She serves as the 38th vice chief of naval operations.

Among her other assignments, she served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, engaged in a counter-piracy effort and was senior military assistant to the Secretary of the Navy.

Meeting AV challenges

Audiovisual material can be challenging to access, maintain and preserve. If you work with AV materials, have them in your collections for teaching or research, or find them complicated whether you work with them daily or once a year, the recently formed AV Preservation Group at Cornell invites members of the campus community to discuss their experiences and hear from leaders in the field of AV preservation, Nov. 13 from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. in G01 Biotechnology. A catered lunch is included; RSVP online.

Speakers are Chris Lacinak, president of Audio-Visual Preservation Services in New York City, on the rising costs of delaying preservation of materials; and Greg Budney, curator of audio at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library, on the importance of AV assets from a research perspective. A Q&A session follows.