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
Tom Brzezina has had work in Chiron, Rusty Truck, Red Fez, Third Wednesday, Peninsula Poets, and The 5-2. His poems draw heavily upon drug experiences of his youth, the underbelly of society, and growing up in Detroit. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, dog, and way too many books.
Lynn Gilbert is a founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and currently associate editor of Third Wednesday in Ann Arbor. Her poems have been published in The Texas Observer, Kansas Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Southwestern American Literature, Peninsula Poets, and Water Music: The Great Lakes State Poetry Anthology, which she co-edited.
Crazy Wisdomn Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main St. Free. 7346652757.info@crazywisdom.net www.crazywisdom.net
ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.
We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.
Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.
Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!
$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
Literati is thrilled to be partnering with the Neutral Zone and the Ann Arbor District Library to celebrate the NEA Big Read month-long exploration of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen
Community members will come together and celebrate the culmination of this month-long NEA Big Read program around Citizen by Claudia Rankine. Featured artist Kush Thompson will perform poetry and talkback with the audience. Members of the Neutral Zone teen book club will also share their poetic responses to Citizen and all of the identity collages created earlier in the month will be displayed for viewing.
The NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) designed to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the sharing of a good book. For more information, see www.arts.gov/national-initiatives/nea-big-read. This event is in partnership with the Neutral Zone.
Literati is excited to welcome the Creative Writing Sub-concentration seniors in the English Department at the University of Michigan for a night of poetry and prose readings!
Each year the Creative Writing Sub-concentration selects no more than 14 students who spend their senior year working with faculty to complete a creative thesis of poetry or fiction. These collections, the same size as many MFA theses, are first attempts to create book-length manuscripts, and to prepare the writers for their work in the future.
Readers include…
Reema Baydoun transferred to the University of Michigan as a sophomore, and has since spent her time in Ann Arbor studying English and caring for her cat. As an Arab-American poet, she often spends weekends in Dearborn for inspiration and good food.
RC student Ariel Everitt hails from a one-stoplight town in Northeast Michigan and is a junior studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, where they have been a research assistant in a biogerontology lab, become a peer writing consultant, and won a Hopwood Award. Their fiction tackles the boundaries between people and genres, applying dream logic to science and human connections wherever possible. Ariel plans to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future.
Madeleine Gaudin is a writer and future Elementary School teacher originally from Austin, Texas. Formerly the Managing Arts Editor at the Michigan Daily, she wrote about movies, music, books and the wonderful hellscape of the Internet for four years before turning her attention to ghost stories and fiction about the apocalypse.
Jenny Hong is a senior studying English with a Sub-concentration in Creative Writing (Poetry). She loves cooking, blogging, and binging TV series on lazy days—and also chatting with people around campus. She is sad that she will no longer be a student in May and enroll in workshops that will give her friendly nudges to write, but she’s also pretty excited for what’s next!
Kate Velguth is a senior studying English. She’s received four Hopwood Awards, and her fiction has appeared in The Washington Square Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere.” Her thesis, a collection of short stories, is entitled The World of Hidden Things. She hopes to teach English in South Korea next year.
Maxim Vinogradov is a local playwright, Michigan student, and is very excited to be reading at Literati! You may have seen his work in productions at Theatre Nova, Slipstream Theatre Initiative, Basement Arts, Outvisible Theatre Company, and others in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. He has had the pleasure of receiving two Hopwood Awards in Drama, two Wilde Awards, the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, and has spent this past summer in internships and residences with The Public Theater and O’Neill Theater Center. He’d love to thank the University of Michigan and Literati for this privilege, and hopes you enjoy his goofy writing!
Ellison Zak is a senior transfer student at the University of Michigan studying English, creative writing, and linguistics. Her thesis grapples with the secrets we all keep and the toll they can take on ourselves and our relationships. She spends her summers between school road tripping across the country and camping at national parks. More than anything else, she hopes to find employment after graduation.
A political drama by Beau Willimon, presented by RC Players. Farragut North tells the story of Stevie Bellamy, a young press secretary working for Morris, a candidate in the democratic presidential primary. . Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
Like the original Blue Beard, Heinrich Blaubart brings death to women he meets. Unlike the original Blue Beard, though, he doesn’t seek to do so; in fact, his fear of relationships makes him try to avoid women. Presented in German by students enrolled in RCHUMS 334: From the Page to the Stage. Surtitles will make it possible for even non-German speakers to follow the action on stage. April 6, 8pm-10pm and April 7, 2pm-4pm, Keene Theater. Non-perishable food items or donation at the door.
Music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, presented by Room 6 Productions. A cautionary tale of a high school honors student who falls for a cute transfer girl. He goes to great lengths to oblige her request for marijuana in the hopes of winning her affection – only to find out that his crush is actually an undercover cop planted in the school to find drug dealers. Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
