PLEASE NOTE: To better estimate attendance for these events, we ask that you register for each meeting of this group.

November 28 Yi Yi, Taiwan, 8.1, 2 hours 53 minutes

Buttressed between two milestone events within their personal sphere, the lives of the Jians - husband and wife N.J. and Min-Min, teenage daughter Ting-Ting, and eight year old son Yang-Yang - and to a lesser extent that of their broader grouping of extended family and friends, are presented. The Jians live in an upscale apartment complex in Taipei along with Min-Min's mother, who has fallen into a coma, each family member who takes turns by her bedside to relay life's goings-on to her regardless of if she can hear them. While Min-Min has troubles with this on-going task, the other three use her as an unofficial sounding board for their issues, primarily in the realm of finding their place in current life and their role in her predicament. Yang-Yang still has a child's simple perspective of the world, such as the reason he has a penchant for taking photographs of the back of people's heads, that naiveté exactly the reason he is the target of bullying especially among a group of older girls, and by one of his teachers. Ting-Ting is acting as the unofficial intermediary in the complicated relationship between her best friend and next door neighbor Lili, and her boyfriend Fatty. It is made all the more difficult as Ting-Ting has feelings for Fatty herself. And N.J., a computer electronics engineer, is seen as the honest one among him and his partners, which is why he is chosen to deal with Japanese Mr. Ota in assessing if it worth the expensive but potentially lucrative risk of going into business with him. Concurrently, N.J., who uses Mr. Ota as a confidante of sorts in their emerging friendship, reunites and becomes reacquainted with childhood friend Sherry, married and now living in Chicago, she who could have been the one in his life if he ended up keeping their appointment thirty years ago. Min-Min's younger brother A-Di may face that same conundrum thirty years down the road as he just married Xiao-Yan partly for a very specific reason, while his old girlfriend Yunyun fumes on the sidelines.

December – No Meeting

January 30 Empties, Czech Republic, 7.2, 1 hour 44 minutes

A comic lovel story about a man who refuses to accept that old age is empty of love, meaning and value to society. 

February 27 The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner, 7.5, 1 hour 44 minutes

A rebellious youth, sentenced to a boy's reformatory for robbing a bakery, rises through the ranks of the institution through his prowess as a long distance runner. During his solitary runs, reveries of his life and times before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his privileged status as the Governor's prize runner.

March 26 The Concert, France 7.5, 1 hour 59 minutes

Thirty years ago, Andrei Simoniovich Filipov, the renowned conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra, was fired for hiring Jewish musicians. Now a mere cleaning man at the Bolshoi, he learns by accident that the Châtelet Theater in Paris invites the Bolshoi orchestra to play there. He decides to gather together his former musicians and to perform in Paris in the place of the current Bolshoi orchestra. As a solo violin player to accompany his old Jewish or Gypsy musicians he wants Anne-Marie Jacquet, a young virtuoso. If they all overcome the hardships ahead this very special concert will be a triumph.

April 30 Central Station, Brazil, 8.0, 1 hour 50 minutes

Dora, a dour old woman who hates customers and calls them 'trash,' works at a Rio de Janeiro central station writing and mailing letters for customers. Josue is a 9-year-old boy who never met his father. His mother is sending letters to his father through Dora. When she dies in a car accident, Dora takes Josue on a trip to find his father.

May 28 Ma Vie En Rose (My Life in Pink), 7.5, 1 hour 28 minutes

Ludovic is a transgender girl who is coming out. She talks of marrying her neighbor's son and can not understand why everyone is so surprised about it. Her family and neighbors struggle with her actions.

June 25 Whale Rider, New Zealand, 7.5, 1 hour 41 minutes

On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their presence there dates back a thousand years or more to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. From then on, Whangara chiefs, always the first-born, always male, have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand tribe, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai loves Koro more than anyone in the world, but she must fight him and a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.