The World Pays a Call
It's a Small World After All

“We can interpret people and events fairly only when we understand them.”
— Birgitta Ingemanson
Associate Professor, Foreign Languages and Cultures
Coordinator, Film Studies, College of Liberal Arts

IT’S 6:20 on a Friday night in Colville, and the parking lot across the street from the Colville Center is beginning to fill with vehicles. The center houses Community Colleges of Spokane and the Washington State University Stevens County Extension office. The building is also home to “Foreign Film Fridays.”

By 6:30, dozens of people from this community of about 5,000 have filed in to the Rendezvous Theatre. About half of the 165 seats are taken. WSU professor Rachel Halverson, Foreign Languages and Cultures, welcomes the crowd and introduces the film, “Mostly Martha,” a German movie with English subtitles. Why have all these people given up a Friday night to come here and read a movie? Faculty members who take part in “Foreign Film Fridays” think it has to do with a thirst for diversity, which exists in isolated communities.

Organized last spring by Peter Griessman and Debra Kollock of WSU Extension with a grant of just $500 to cover faculty travel expenses, the film festival has provided foreign films and discussion. Drawing an average crowd of 70 plus, interest in Colville appears strong, and further financial support may allow the Friday film festival to continue in 2004. The series has been a true community effort, with speakers driving up from the Pullman campus and much support also coming from the faculty, staff, and student body of the CCS - Colville Center.

The film series, as hoped, also appears to fill a cultural void. “I’ve always enjoyed the European perspective, which offers a different insight,” says Dave McGrane, who attended the film with his wife, Sharon. And McGrane, like most in the audience, has drawn a conclusion after experiencing different cultures through film. “Basically,” he says, “we’re all humans.” Janet Kovalchik, a 14-year Colville resident, agrees. “We don’t live in a very diverse community, so it’s nice to see other points of view and experience different cultures through this media. I’ve heard the estimate that we are 96 percent Caucasian here, and this can give you a one-sided view of the world.”

What is good for Colville residents is proving good for WSU students as well. Birgitta Ingemanson, associate professor, Foreign Languages and Cultures, and coordinator of the College of Liberal Arts Film Studies program, believes good films are excellent “texts” for deep study. "We can ‘read’ the stories, investigate the cinematic devices, and get to know people and events that we may never meet in our own lives. These activities promote critical thinking, basic technological knowledge, and acquaintance with human diversity across numerous cultures,” she says.

"On another level,” Ingemanson adds, “film study is both about the world and about us. It is like travel—whether in our own society or to foreign cultures—where we constantly meet and have to deal with new situations and different people, and where we may be put off by their ways of doing things. We are then forced to examine our own beliefs and behavioral systems, and every good film course teaches us to judge by the facts rather than merely by the emotions.”

Last fall’s films in Colville’s “Foreign Film Fridays”:

• “Antonia’s Line” (Netherlands, 1995), introduced by Jeremy Krug
• “Elling” (Norway, 2001), introduced by Birgitta Ingemanson
• “Mostly Martha" (Germany, 2002), introduced by Rachel Halverson
• “Vampires in Havana" (Cuba, 1985), introduced by Vilma Navarro-Daniels