Human Rights Film Series Marks 10th Anniversary

UC Merced Aerial Picture
February 2, 2016

The UC Merced Human Rights Film Series celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, with a series dedicated to the memory of Denard Davis, a Merced community advocate, educator, mentor and civil rights leader who died in September.

The purpose of the Human Rights Film Series is to bring home the discussion about human rights, and to view film as an art form that can create change at the local and global levels in the effort to end violence and inequality.

Series organizers plan to screen a different film at 7 p.m. each of the first three Fridays in February. Each of these screenings takes place in the Classroom and Office Building, Room 120.

A special event is planned for the final Friday of the month, Feb. 26. Everyone is welcome to attend a reception at 6 p.m. at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center, 645 W. Main St., Merced, with filmmakers Karen Thorsen and Douglas K. Dempsey. Their film “James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket” plays after the reception.

All events in the Human Rights Film Series are free and open to the public. Details are as follows:

  • Feb. 5: “3 1/2 minutes, 10 bullets,” Marc Silver, 2015, 98 minutes. The film chronicles the murder trial of Michael Dunn, who fired gunshots into a car of four unarmed black teenagers in Jacksonville, Fla., killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis.
  • Feb. 12: “Out in the Night,” Blair Doroshwalther, 2014, 82 minutes. After four young African-American lesbians are sexually and violently confronted on the streets of New York City, their race, gender identities and sexuality are criminalized in the mainstream news media and legal system.
  • Feb. 19: “The House I Live in,” Eugene Jarecki, 2013, 110 minutes. An unflinching look at how the war on drugs in the United States has disproportionately disenfranchised, incarcerated and impoverished African-Americans.
  • Feb. 26: “James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket,” Karen Thorsen and Douglas K. Dempsey, 1989, restored and remastered, 90 minutes. Reception at 6 p.m., film at 7 p.m. The life, works and beliefs of the late writer and civil rights activist are recounted — what it is to be born black, impoverished, gifted and gay in a world that has yet to understand that “all men are brothers.”

For information, email Nigel Hatton or call 209-228-4384.