Penn Museum to showcase gender across cultures

For the fifth year, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will be showing its annual movie series. This year’s screenings, however, will be especially personal. The “Gender Across Cultures” film series will highlight the struggle of varying gender identities across the globe, as well as their historical importance.

The upcoming movie will be “A Quiet Inquisition,” showing on Nov. 8 at 2 p.m. The story details the life of a female doctor in a public hospital in Managua, Nicaragua. She contends with the problems of dealing with a new law that bans all cases of abortion and how that impacts the medical setting and feminist idea, all from a very personal perspective. Tali Ziv, a doctoral candidate in anthropology that will be introducing the film, said it was one that “grapples with important feminist issues but also about ethics … and difficult realities of ethics.”

Katherine Pourshariati, a film archivist at the museum and organizer for the film series said she found the “hidden gem” of a film over the past year and a half to ensure it was the just the right one. In that time frame, Pourshariati found the next three films to be shown after it in December, February and March.

The series is designed so that all films shown have as personal of a story as “A Quiet Inquisition.” Pourshariati said her hope for the series is for each film to be, “character driven … so people can feel like they are a part of their world.”

General attendance to the film series, in the past, has been steady, with about 50 people per showing. Pourshariati added that the setting of each event is informal so that each attendee feels free to put their questions to the speaker at each showing, who is generally involved with the movie itself. Pourshariati’s greatest focus is the viewer, who she said she wants to feel safe and in an open environment, especially with the personal nature of this year’s topic. When organizing the events, “Generally I want to make sure feelings, especially when cross culture, are respected,” she said.

The museum is not the only force behind these movies. The anthropology student group Camra plays a major role in the film series. Student run and focused on a wide variety of anthropologies, Camra helps the museum run the event and allows students to become involved in the movie series as well.

After last year’s success through a film series on “Color,” the Penn Museum is expecting another insightful and moving series this year. The films are free and open to the public with admission to the Penn Museum.

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