This collaborative event in #GRmi made me so proud to live here. http://t.co/NNdECgW #Film

Over the last 10 years, cultural programs from the various universities and colleges have begun actively collaborating to create exciting and diverse programming in our region.

A fine example of such collaboration is the return of the Grand Rapids Latin American Film Festival brought to the screen by Aquinas College, Calvin College and Grand Valley State University. The festival takes place April 7-9, at Celebration! Cinema RiverTown and Wealthy Theatre.  

The festival's goal is to provide the entire West Michigan community and students with a unique and enriching opportunity to acquaint themselves with the latest and most acclaimed Latin American films.

"We didn't have any particular theme as our goal other than to showcase the diversity of Latin America through its cinema," says Dr. Toni Perrine, GVSU Professor of Film and Video and GRLAFF committee member. "For that reason, we want to exhibit movies from different countries. So, with the exception of Mexico, we have made a priority of not showing more than one film from any one country in the first two years."

Last year, the first-year festival programmed films from Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and Uruguay. For the second year, GRLAFF has selected films from El Salvador/Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Puerto Rico and USA/Argentina with an 'opera prima' from a young director.

This year's showcase film is the Peruvian film "Contracoriente" (Undertow), a film that at its core explores the complex emotions of intersecting human sexuality within this tiny seaside town. 

After each of the six films, students from each of the colleges will lead a discussion with the audience to help enrich the educational aspects of the festival. This immersion of students into the programming is key to the festival's success and an on-going goal of fostering dialog across cultural lines.

A major addition to the festival this year is the appearance by the screenwriter, actor and producer Oscar Torres, who will be attending the Friday, April 8 screening of "Voces Inocentes" (Innocent Voices) to discuss his semi-autobiographical film. 

(Tommy adds, I saw this film on Saturday and it was beautifully rich in every way. The conversations after the film ended with the audience members were also insightful.)

#TempleGrandin's Types of Thinking slide.

Waiting for TempleGrandin to speak at #CalvinCollege FAC about celebrating diverse minds.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

For a full schedule: www.Calvin.edu/January

Silpada The World! ( i wanna get off ) or How One Woman Chose A Bauble over a Pulitzer

It could be a Venus thing and if so, then I can begin to understand how someone could be attracted to Silpada (or any piece of shiny metal yarn) over a hot cast Pulitzer.

Wait, one needs the back story first.

The other day I offered a ticket to my dear Venanic friend to travel with this Marsan (me) to a lecture by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Michael Chabon.

Since my friend is also very young and talented like the author, I figured the reply would go something like this:

Martian (me): Wanna go to a lecture?

Venanic: Shit Yeah!

Instead it went more like this:

Martian (me): Dude, I scored free tickets to the Michael Chabon lecture on Thursday. Wanna go?

Venanic friend (she): Oh, that sounds great, but I am going to swing by a fellow Venanic's home for a Silpada party.

Martian: (long pause as I pondered my poker hand made up of two tickets) But Michael Chabon is considered to be one of the greatest living (and very young) authors of our time. He won the Pulitzer for his The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at the age of 38.

Venanic: Yeah, but Silpada has this necklace I need.

So there I was holding two worlds in a nutshell.

Martian men love prizes and worship those who labor with massive amounts of sweat in the sporting arena or with the ramming finger power of applying ink to the paper through rapid firing of keyboard clicks against all odds to tell their story.

While Venanicians love a shiny prize they can obtain in the privacy of their own home with a swift but sweet application of ink to a 6.5 x 3 inch paper payment promise.

But are Chabon and Silpada really so different, are Martians and Venanicians alike?

Chabon loves to tell his stories, to dream up fantastical scenarios and using the reference of common language and the history of space marries a universe's knowledge of stuff, he is able to transport us to worlds he has imagined.

Silpada from their website says, "Every woman" (Venanic) "has a story to tell and we feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to share our personal story with so many others." Are Venanic's just using Silpada to help dress up their story like Chabon?

I can only imagine as my mind wandered last night in the Calvin College lecture of what my Venanic friend was doing at the same time.

As I shifted in my seat to get comfortable, I imagined she slipped on her neck these hand crafted baubles. What places did she imagine and maybe dare reveal to the others in the room.

As Chabon shared stories of his Yiddish background and the world he imagined through the comic yet poetic relief language can provide, I wondered if my Venanic friend was able to find the chance to weave the word "Dickhead" the way Chabon did in this audience gathered in a church sanctuary.

Would her story, sharing the same comic device of using crude language, break the spell of celebrity stare induced by the shiny spotlight? Would Dickhead bring us all together like the magical aligning of the stars?

The questions would continue in my head as I bounced from orbit to orbit.

Would people gasp in horror at her marriage to honesty or would they laugh the loudest of the evening as they did for Chabon causing me to wonder what spring had sprung in the vocal cords of my alma mater.

How was her imagination running wild as she encountered her personal future as the shiny handcrafted beauty encircled her neck?

I thought back to Michael Chabon’s simple revelation of the time-honored advice of owning your past as you pen into the future.

Pen and Jewelry both propel us into the future story. They create a world for us that on our own did not exist until this personal encounter.

In the end I conclude oh so crudely that our worlds do pass and for a moment we feel each other's gravitational pull of being in the story...the shared moment.

Martians and Venanic love the places they have traveled and every once in a while it is totally plausible we may even receive something to place on our dresser table that reminds us of the ways we connected in making our own story out of these shared universal worlds.