Kit Noir Film Festival: Border Incidents Roundtable Discussion
Kit Noir Film Festival: Border Incidents Roundtable Discussion
Hear a discussion exploring issues related to film noir and the U.S.-Mexican border as witnessed in three films: Border Incident (1949), Where Danger Lives (1950), and Touch of Evil (1958).
FREE
School of the Arts online
March 18, 2021 | 7:00 pm
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Speaker details

Jonathan Ryan
Executive Director, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES)
Homi K. Bhabha
Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
Jonathan Auerbach
Emeritus Professor of English, University of Maryland
Margarita de Orellana
Editor, Artes de México
Rob King
Professor of Film, Columbia University (moderator)

How to watch

Register in advance for the free film screenings and roundtable discussion.

Presented by

School of the Arts
Columbia University
New York, NY

About The Festival

The abridged, virtual 2021 Dr. Saul and Dorothy Kit Film Noir Festival presents three films set at the US-Mexico border: Anthony Mann’s Border Incident (1949), John Farrow’s Where Danger Lives (1950), and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958). All films will stream free of charge between March 11-21, 2021 and include pre-recorded introductions from Columbia University film scholars.

The border has long been both a third rail in American politics and a recurrent setting in crime fiction. It is a place where goods entering the US can become “contraband” and the citizens of neighboring states “undocumented immigrants.” Yet the border is also a zone where domestic crime seeks its own escape, evading the arm of US law to find safe haven. The border has in this way functioned in American popular culture as a shadow zone where categories of legality and illegality are constructed and reconstructed; a place, one might imagine, ripe for noir.

This virtual festival will culminate with a roundtable discussion with scholars and activists, including Jonathan Ryan (RAICES), Jonathan Auerbach (University of Maryland), Margarita de Orellana (Artes de México), and Homi Bhabha (Harvard University). Click here to read our in-depth festival introduction.

This festival is funded by a generous gift from alumnus Gordon Kit ’76 (Columbia College), in honor of his parents.

For more information, contact filmnoir@columbia.edu.

Image: Still from John Farrow’s Where Danger Lives, 1950 / courtesy of Sense of Cinema and School of the Arts