Event

Translation Trouble 

A Film Series presented by Penn Humanities Forum in collaboration with Cinema Studies and International House Philadelphia with Cinema Studies and International House Philadelphia

An international and multimodal art form from its very inception, the cinema has always been intimately bound up with translation. Our 2017 series presents films in which this founding involvement with multiple systems of meaning is heightened and intensified to an extraordinary degree. In these films, translation is a strange and even dangerous process, as disturbing as it is exhilarating.

Koko: A Talking Gorilla (1978, dir. Barbet Schroeder, 80 min.)

Teaching Koko human communication is not all sunlight and sweetness in this candid documentary of Koko and her trainer Dr. Francis “Penny” Patterson. Is teaching human sign language to gorillas a breakthrough in communication between humans and apes? Or does it suggest something more troubling about how humans view animals?

Introduction: Shereen Chang, PhD Candidate, Philosophy and Graduate Fellow, Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities.

To register: www.phf.upenn.edu