The Webster Readings are organized by second-year students, and feature their poetry and prose. Post-graduate Zell fellows are regularly invited to introduce and/or open for writers scheduled to visit local bookstore Literati.
Today: Katarina Bishop and Thea Chacamaty.
A farce by Patrick Barlow, presented by RC Players. 39 Steps is a parody of the classic Hitchcock spy thriller, where four actors play every role.
Also Saturday, March 23, at 8 pm.
Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
An evening of Buddhist storytelling with Rafe Martin. Listen to Buddhist Jataka Tales. He will be joined by longtime Zen Buddhist teacher and storyteller, Haju Sunim, and Zen storyteller Sandong Kurt Iselt. Children and families welcome, as well as all those who are curious about the wondrous stories that underpin Buddhism and Buddhist teachings. Rafe will be available for book signings after the event. $25. $15/ages 16 and under. Contact Zen Buddhist Temple at 761-6520; annarbor@zenbuddhisttemple.org or zenbuddhisttemple.org.
A farce by Patrick Barlow, presented by RC Players. 39 Steps is a parody of the classic Hitchcock spy thriller, where four actors play every role. Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
2-4 p.m., Ann Arbor District Library 3rd fl. Freespace, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. annarborstorytelling.org .
Readings by writers featured in Surrendurance, the 11th annual edition of Prison Creative Arts Project book that features work by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers. Also, a performance by the U-M Men’s Glee Club. Book sale.
3 p.m., Pierpont Commons East Room. Free. 647-6771.
Join us for a free public screening of Chernobyl Heart and White Horse, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Maryann De Leo and Residential College and Slavic Languages and Literatures professor Herb Eagle.
Maryann De Leo is an American director and producer. She has been working in documentary filmmaking for over twenty years. Her work addresses timely issues under the umbrella of social justice, such as gender-based violence (Rape: Cries from the Heartland, 1991 and Terror at Home, 2005), mental illness (Bellevue: Inside Out, 2001), and urban blight (High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell, 1995). De Leo has received numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Chernobyl Heart, 2003.
Chernobyl Heart (39 min.) is an Oscar-winning documentary about the effects of radiation on the children of Belarus, 16 years after the accident at the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. The film begins with the journey into the exclusion zone, driving to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and follows the invisible trail of radiation to the country’s hospitals, cancer centers, orphanages, and mental asylums, where the children live, or are being treated for their disease.
White Horse (17 min.) is a short documentary by filmmakers Maryann DeLeo and Christophe Bisson that features a man (Maxym Surkov) returning to his Ukraine home for the first time in twenty years. Evacuated from the city of Pripyat, Ukraine in 1986 due to the Chernobyl disaster, he has not returned since then. White Horse was nominated for a Golden Bear in the 2008 Berlinale.
Harmful rhetoric towards journalists and the press casts doubt about the future of a free press and the safety of reporters. This was evident following the murders of five staff members at the Capital Gazette and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. As democratic nations fall short in protecting press freedom, what are the implications for journalists of all nations? In an alarming numbers, reporters around the world are persecuted, jailed, exiled and even killed for exposing the truth.
Knight-Wallace international journalists Elena Milashina of Novaya Gazeta, Itai Anghel of Israeli TV, and Jawad Sukhanyar of The New York Times will discuss how threats and state censorship impact their work. In a discussion led by the University’s media law and First Amendment scholar Professor Leonard Niehoff, they will share their experiences reporting from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa and discuss what can be done to protect journalists and foster press freedom around the world.
The Eisendrath Symposium honors Charles R. Eisendrath, former director of Wallace House, and his lifelong commitment to international journalism.
About the Speakers
Elena Milashina was a 2010 Knight-Wallace Fellow and is an award winning investigative journalist for Russia’s independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. After the killing of Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, Milashina became the key source of information about grave rights abuses in Chechnya. She investigates and brings to attention accounts of enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial executions, torture, and persecution of relatives of alleged insurgents, women’s rights in Chechnya and beyond. She also plays a key role in the independent investigation into the murder of Chechen human rights defender Natalia Estemirova. Milashina exposed a major crackdown on gay men in Chechnya in spring 2017, has investigated the catastrophe of the Kursk submarine, and hostage crises in Moscow (Nord–Ost) and Beslan. She has documented atrocities committed by both sides during the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict and pressed for an end to impunity. She has repeatedly received death threats from the Chechen authorities.
Itai Anghel is a 2019 Knight-Wallace Fellow and a correspondent and documentary filmmaker for UVDA, a weekly investigative current affairs and documentary program on Israeli TV, Channel 2, where he also worked as a senior foreign affairs correspondent. Previously, he was a correspondent and chief editor of foreign affairs at Galatz (GLZ) Radio Station. He received the Sokolov Award, the highest award for outstanding journalism in Israel, in 2017, and he is a five-time recipient of the “Best TV Documentary in Israel” award from the Israeli Forum of Documentary Filmmakers.
Jawad Sukhanyar is a 2019 Knight-Wallace Fellow and a reporter for The New York Times in Afghanistan. He joined the Times in 2011 and is now the longest serving reporter in the paper’s Kabul bureau. Sukhanyar covers human rights and women’s issues and also covered the 2014 disputed Afghan presidential election. He worked as a researcher on a book about a couple who escaped an Afghan honor killing for the author Rod Nordland. Until 2011, he was a freelance reporter and researcher for various foreign news organizations. He also served as interpreter and researcher on a biography of former Afghan president Hamid Karzai for the author Bette Dam.
About the Moderator
Leonard Niehoff is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, where he teaches courses in Media Law, First Amendment, and the history of banned books, among other things. He is the author of more than one-hundred articles, many in the field of free speech, and is currently at work on a book about the First Amendment. He has also practiced media and First Amendment law for over thirty years, representing numerous print publications, broadcasters, online media, and journalists. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.
Free and open to the public.
For questions about the event email: WallaceHouseEvents@umich.edu
This event is produced with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Michigan Radio and the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies are co-sponsors of the event.
This local writer reads from and discusses You’d Be Mine, her debut romance novel about the relationship between a sweet country music heiress and a country superstar with a bad boy image who convinces her to join his tour. Signing.
7 p.m., Nicola’s, Westgate shopping center. Free. 662-0600
