Rider
University
will hold its first film symposium, Rider Goes to the Movies, on Tuesday, March 3, through Thursday, March 5, on the Lawrenceville campus, 2083 Lawrenceville Road. The three-day event will include accomplished feature and documentary filmmakers, including two Rider alumni, student paper panels and film screenings, and guest speakers. All events will be held in Sweigart Hall Room 115.
The symposium aims to raise awareness about the University’s new Film and Media Studies Program and Cinema Studies Concentration introduced this year, explained Dr. Cynthia Lucia, associate professor of English and director of the program.
Playwright and screenwriter William Mastrosimone ’74 (Bang Bang You’re Dead, 2002) and screenwriter, actor and director Brian Delate ’75 (Soldier’s Heart, 2008) will join novelist and adjunct faculty member Brent Monahan (An American Haunting, 2005) during an interview, film clips, and question and answer session on Tuesday, March 3, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Guest speaker Millicent Marcus, professor of Italian and chair of the Department of Italian Language and Literature at
Yale
University
, will present Italian Film in the Shadow of the Holocaust, where she will discuss the film Canone Inverso (2000) on Wednesday, March 4, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. In the film, set in London, Prague and
Vienna
, passionate love for music draws a young violinist to an accomplished Jewish pianist on the eve of World War II.
Other local luminaries will include documentary filmmakers Janet Gardner (Children of the Night, 1995; The Last Ghost of War, 2008; Dancing Through Death: The Monkey, The Magic and Madness of Cambodia, 1999; Precious Cargo, 1983) and Tom Spain (To Be An American, circa 1983; To Be a Doctor, 1980; The Changing West, 1983), as well as critics Amy Taubin, Richard Porton, Kevin Lally and Robert Cashill.
Rider students will present their work during the student paper panels on Wednesday, March 4, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Thursday, March 5, 1:10 to 4:10 p.m. Panel topics will include Film Form and Theory, Two American Masters: Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg, Music Sound and Movement, and Gender in Cinema. There will also be screenings of student films on Tuesday, March 3, from 5 to 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 4, from 1:10 to 4:10 p.m., and Thursday, March 5, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“It’s a great opportunity for students to present their work,” said Lucia about the symposium. “Almost all of the students are in the Film and Media Studies program.”
The event is organized and run by the Film and Media Studies Program in co-sponsorship with the Departments of English, Communication and Journalism, Fine Arts, Foreign Languages and Literature; the Alternative Film Club; R.U.N. (Rider University Network); and Student Government Association. For a complete schedule of events, please visit http://www.rider.edu/files/symposium_09_main.pdf.
The Film and Media Studies Program, which includes a minor and a Cinema Studies Concentration, comprises 33 courses in English, Communication, American Studies, Fine Arts, Foreign Languages, Political Science, Law and Justice, Sociology, Psychology and Global and Multinational Studies.
Lucia, who specialized in film during her Ph.D. studies at New York University, has augmented the classroom offerings with several related activities: a daylong Cinematheque that presents classics from the “canon” every film student should see; an Alternative Film Club that explores offbeat films both on and off campus; a speaker series; and the Double Vision Film series, which screens pairs of related films back to back.
“We want to create a film culture here,” said Lucia. “I can see more and more that we’re resembling a big-city film school where students are really immersed.”

