The film imagines an actress preparing to play Césaire, and encountering and re-examining her own ideas about creativity, love, Black identity, and politics as a result.

Through an intimate reconstruction of an important phone call, When The Phone Rang investigates dislocation and the nature of remembering. In the protagonist’s eleven-year-old mind, the phone call erases her entire country, history, and identity and hides its existence in books, films, and memories of those born before 1995.

A screening of the documentary Checkpoint Zoo followed by a conversation with director Joshua Zeman.

At a time of both urgent need for algorithmic literacy and heightened social division, it is vital to understand the politicized grammar with which we talk and think about AI. This talk by Gerald Sim will focus on visual media whose power derives from being uniquely vivid, engaging, and visceral.

Campus community only, please.

Metropolis Reimagined is a new scoring of the 1984 restoration of Fritz Lang’s classic film, performed live by acclaimed pianist Po-Wei Ger and electronic artist Drake Andersen.

MODfest 2025

Prudence Fenton ’75 will be featured at a screening of a documentary she co-produced about her partner, the songwriter Allee Willis. Open to the public.

The Vassar Film Department will host alum India Donaldson ’07 and her feature debut, Good One. This event is free and open to the public.

The Film Department and Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies presents a screening of some of Peggy Ahwesh’s short films, followed by a Q&A session moderated by Visiting Assistant Professor of Film Carl Elsaesser.

Campus community only, please.

Join alum Jonathan Silberberg, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and producer, for an engaging discussion about the challenges and rewards of a career in documentary filmmaking and how the field is rapidly transforming today.

The Film Department will be hosting a screening of Yance Ford’s new film Power, which traces the accumulation of money, the consolidation of political power, and the nearly unrestricted bipartisan support that has created the institution of policing as we know it. Followed by a Q&A with the director moderated by Professor Mia Mask.

This film chronicles the arc of a family across history, geography and tragedy—from the racial segregation of the Jim Crow South to the promise of New York City.

A multidisciplinary faculty panel (including Film, Media Studies, Neuroscience & Behavior, and Psychological Science) will be hosting a special screening of the short film See Memory followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker, Viviane Silvera.

Strain, Professor of Film and the Moving Image at Wesleyan University, will lecture on her experience as a documentary filmmaker of color and woman dedicated to representing issues of race and history in the United States.

David Banks of SUNY Albany presents from his recent book, The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America.

Film Professor Mia Mask examines the African American Western hero within the larger context of film history by considering how Black westerns evolved.

Campus community only, please.

Award-winning author Jennine Capó Crucet will read from her novel Make Your Home Among Strangers. Q&A and book signing to follow.

A free community film screening festival at the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory located at 8 North Cherry Street.

Noah Kalina has taken a picture of himself daily since 2000 for his series Everyday, which has amassed over 40 million views. He will discuss his photography career and matters of composition, concept, and duration.

In this lecture, Professor Nick Rees-Roberts of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, mobilizes failure as a critical tool to unpack the structural fault lines of an industry invested in the promotion of success and celebrity in which no one can afford to fail.

Director/producer Michael Dwyer made this 20-minute film featuring Tomiko Morimoto West, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima who taught Japanese language courses at Vassar for a decade until she retired in 1994. Both will be available for a Q&A session after the screening.