Close
A journey across the German Language! Sara Karim
By sarakarim, on 23 July 2020
A journey across the German Language! Sara Karim
I’m Sara, I’m going to en
ter my second year next year in September 2020. I study BA Comparative Literature with German as my chosen language. Over the course of the lockdown period, I set up an online German language learning initiative designed to help students to improve their German vocabulary, speaking and grammar skills. The sessions have been very enjoyable so far, with a range of activities explored with UCL students of all levels of German. Time zones were managed as well, since the initiative has had good feedback from the department and from the participants who were from a variety of different time zones, including from London, Kent, Lancashire, Milan, Peru, Moscow and Singapore. Despite the current pandemic situation that features uncertainty, what this pandemic has also shown me is the strength and courage of students to keep learning German in a dynamic atmosphere and in a fun and creative manner. As the sessions continue, I am becoming more aware that teamwork can prevail even during the toughest of times. What is more apparent is also the determination to learn from experiences and to be constantly creative. So far, for me, it has been a very rewarding experience to sustain and inspire an established group of students that strive to learn more about different cultures.
Film Club: Barbara (dir. Christian Petzold, 2012)
By Christine E Sas and mererid.davies, on 17 July 2020
Barbara (2012), a feature film by German film-maker Christian Petzold, is set in East Germany in the early 1980s. Praised as an “an elegant drama based on human and political dilemmas” (The Guardian), the film tells the story of a talented doctor who runs afoul of the authorities when she applies for an exit visa to emigrate to the West. Stripped of her position at the prominent Charité hospital in East Berlin, she gets transferred to a small provincial clinic near the Baltic Sea but remains under constant surveillance by the Stasi …
Barbara will be introduced by Katharina Forster. View the film here (link to BoB), at your convenience. If you’d like to join us for a lively and very informal discussion of this film at 4pm on Tue 21 July, on Microsoft Teams, please join the Film Club here.
Film Club: Alamar / To the Sea (dir. Pedro González Rubio, 2009)
By mererid.davies and Christine E Sas, on 8 July 2020
We’re looking forward to our next film for the SELCS/CMII Film Club, Alamar / To the Sea (dir. Pedro González Rubio, 2009), to be introduced by Debbie Martin.
Debbie writes: “To quote one of its reviews, Alamar is a ‘sun-kissed dream drift’ of a film, a luminous and magical journey to the threatened marine environment of Mexico’s Chinchorro Reef. So, if you’re longing for a break from Covid-imposed confinement, you might enjoy this film! It’s also an interesting film for thinking about questions of cinematic pleasure, slowness and immersive aesthetics, as well as the boundaries of documentary.”
Film Club: Rhosyn a Rhith / Coming Up Roses (dir. Stephen Bayly, 1986)
By Christine E Sas and mererid.davies, on 2 July 2020
Dear all,
Thank you so much to everyone who has attended and / or presented a film at the above this summer.
It’s been really great so far, with over 60 staff and students joining (including some from SSEES, who are very welcome). We’ve had a lively discussion each week and explored all sorts of films. We are looking forward now to next week and our seventh film, Rhosyn a Rhith / Coming Up Roses (Stephen Bayly, 1986), kindly suggested and introduced by Ruth Austin. Please join us here if you’d like to, either regularly or occasionally, on Tuesdays at 4pm (view the film here any time in advance at your own convenience – this is a link to BoB).
Film Club: Marleen Gorris, A Question of Silence, 1982 (30 June)
By Christine E Sas, on 29 June 2020
A female psychiatrist is appointed by a judge to evaluate three women who, strangers to each other, have each confessed to the murder of the same man. Their rage toward and hatred of their male-dominated society is gradually understood by the psychiatrist, who begins to question her own nature.
“A Question of Silence is a fluent reminder of the cinema’s ability not only to please us with the eloquence of formal, optical arrangements and conventional scenarios, but to critically alter the moments of our lives: to connect the suggestions in the movie theater’s darkened interiority with the exteriority of public life. And in doing so, it is another step in the welcoming of female spectators into the audience of men.” – Barbara Kruger
UCL Literary Translation TinT: Theatre in Translation network
By a.surianidasilva, on 23 June 2020
O Homen e a Mancha by Brazilian dramatist Caio Fernando Abreu (1948–1966), translated by Elton Uliana, as The Man and La Mancha
This month’s meeting at Out of the Wings (26/06 Friday @3pm London time) will be featuring a play by the Brazilian writer Caio Fernando Abreu, translated by our alumni Elton Uliana. The project has the support of Luís Artur Nunes, director of the first production of the play in Brazil (1996), as well as of a multimedia dramatic reading of the text in 2016 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Abreu’s death, and Marcos Breda, who was in cast of both productions (Nunes and Breda are the organizers of “Caio Fernando de Abreu: Teatro Completo”, 1997) – the Zoom meeting is open to the public, for registration and details please email info@outofthewings.org.
From Out of the Wings; “Will we be tilting at windmills next week? Join us June 26 for our monthly meet. We discover ‘O homem e a Mancha/The Man and La Mancha’, a Brazilian reimagining of Don Quixote by Caio Fernando Abreu, translated into English by @eltonuk Elton Uliana. Email info [at] outofthewings.org for details.”
Languages and Cultures under Lockdown: SELCS-CMII Photography Competition
By Jo M Evans, on 2 June 2020
‘Everything we see is propped on something we have previously seen’ (Kaja Silverman)
When I took over as the Head of SELCS and Chair of CMII in September 2019, my goals were to: 1) consolidate after a decade of expansion; 2) review the relocation of admin support to the first floor of Foster Court; 3) oversee the reconstruction of our website; 4) complete the search for a new name for SELCS-CMII, and, 5) re-start the annual photography competition.
Lockdown language learning
By Christine E Sas, on 2 June 2020
By SELCS Language Co-ordinators (Marie Fournier, Anne Grydehøj, Helga Hlaðgerður Lúthersdóttir, Joana Jacob Ramalho, Christina Massaccesi, Marga Navarrete, Mazal Oaknín, Dagmar Paulus, Christine Sas)
Some students may feel that the lockdown has bereft them of essential face to face contact time with peers and tutors to develop fluency and gain a better understanding of the languages they study. We have all been adjusting to these changing times and finding our way around this conundrum too and would like to invite you all to think creatively and share with each other how you have been practising your Danish, Dutch, French, German, Icelandic, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish, this vast array of fascinating languages on offer in SELCS!
SELCS/CMII Film Club: Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964 (2 June 2020)
By Christine E Sas, on 1 June 2020
Dear students,
I’m excited to announce our film for the SELCS/CMII Film Club this week, which will be Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Jennifer Rushworth will be on hand to introduce and lead an informal discussion about this film on Microsoft Teams next Tuesday (see below also for changed timings and arrangements). Jennifer writes:
Join us to discuss Jacques Demy’s 1964 classic film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). This gorgeous film, with music by Michel Legrand, is sung throughout and features a dazzlingly young and beautiful Catherine Deneuve in love and with some difficult decisions to make.
UCL SELCS Brazilian Translation Club (26 May 2020)
By Ulrich Tiedau, on 26 May 2020
The UCL SELCS Brazilian Translation Club carries on online! Rewatch our virtual translation club discussion about the short story ‘O benfeitor de Santa Clara’ by Décio Zylberstajn with guest translator Larissa Jordão from 26 May 2020.
The Brazilian Translation Club is a series of workshops in which students, translators, and enthusiasts of Brazilian literature meet to discuss the translation of a selected contemporary Brazilian short story. It is a partnership between Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Associate Professor in Brazilian Studies, Department of Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies, UCL, and Nara Vidal, writer, and owner of Capitolina Books. In each workshop, a different member reads out their translation and leads the discussion. The sessions are fun and very productive. Anyone who translates from and into Portuguese or has some knowledge of the language is welcome.