Friday 10/19 – Thursday 10/25
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Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is, of course, about a half-blind hunchback named Quasimodo who lives in that medieval cathedral. So it’s fitting that tonight’s screening of the first film version of the story–Wallace Worsley’s silent 1923 classic, starring Lon Chaney–will take place at Hyde Park’s historic Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. Jay Warren will accompany the film with his original score on the chapel’s E.M. Skinner organ, which was installed five years after the film’s release. It’s at 8 at 5850 S. Woodlawn. The $10 admission fee–$7 for students and seniors–goes toward the organ’s restoration; call 773-702-7059 for more.
20 SATURDAY French communist leader Daniel Bensaid cut his revolutionary teeth during the 1968 student uprising. Now a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, he’s currently on a speaking tour of the U.S.; this afternoon he’ll give a lecture on “Terrorism & War: The Marxist Reply” at 3 at DePaul University’s Schmitt Academic Center, 2323 N. Kenmore, room 254. Tonight at 8 he’ll give a talk called “Nobody Knows the Revolution of the 21st Century” at the New World Resource Center, 2600 W. Fullerton. Both events are free; for more information call 773-227-4011.
In their new book, In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature–Pre-Columbian to the Present, editors Miguel Leon-Portilla and Earl Shorris reinterpret Mayan glyphic writings to get the Indian view of the conquest of Mexico and Central America and offer new translations of Aztec poems, accounts of the conquest, and the philosophy of the Popol Vuh. At a lecture tonight called In the Language of Kings: Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to Chicago, Leon-Portilla will read several poems in Nahuatl, each of which will be followed by an English translation from Shorris. The pair will also discuss “how the culture of Mesoamerica is alive and flourishing today in Chicago and the rest of the United States.” The multimedia lecture starts at 6 at the Terra Museum of American Art, 666 N. Michigan. General admission is $7 (free for students); those who register in advance and pay $40 ($35 for students) will receive a copy of the book and admission to a discussion with the authors following the lecture. Call 312-654-2255.
