The Kopkind Blog

EVENTS during our session on “Looking South: in the US and across borders.”

Sunday, August 12, our Movie Evening pot-luck cookout (salads, side dishes, deserts) , 5:30 pm
screening, 7 pm
The Sixth Section (and other films on hidden worlds in transnational space)

With filmmaker Alex Rivera.
The Sixth Section uses humor, visual effects, animation and traditional documentary techniques to tell the story of Mexicans who left their village of Bouqueron to find work in the blasted postindustrial environs of Newburgh, New York, and from there created an association, Grupo Union, through which they maintain an active life in their hometown a thousand miles away. Reviewers call it a work of "cinematic bounty", "conceptually sophisticated" and also "jaw-dropping." Also two shorts by Rivera: Why Cybraceros? and The Borders Trilogy

Friday, August 17, at 7:30pm, our Speaker Evening
"Two Years After Katrina: Disaster, Race & American Politics"

Featuring Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton, and author of the award-winning Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought. On the cusp of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Harris-Lacewell, who has spent much of the past two years examining the storm’s aftermath in New Orleans, will consider a question that was almost unimaginable before the disaster in August 2005: how could a grand, storied city be destroyed, its people flung to the far corners, and, past the news cycle, America wouldn’t really care? A brilliant, vivacious speaker, she will explore the politics of race, survival, migration and resistance. While the event is free of charge, if you would like to bring a desert to share with others after the talk, please do so.

Those who are interested in attending the Kopkind Public Events and need directions to the Organ Barn at Tree Frog Farm in Guilford, Vermont, should contact the administrator of Kopkind, John Scagliotti at john@afterstonewall.com