Tuesday, Feb 19, 2019
Dr. Desiree Garcia of Dartmouth University will present keynote address during the 2-day event
Nurtured on Broadway and embraced by network TV, musicals have also been a stalwart film genre for more than 90 years. This year, they are the subject of Rider University’s annual film symposium. “Rhythms in the Canyons: Film Musicals through the Decades" will feature film scholars, faculty roundtables, student panels and film screenings during the two-day event, March 6-7, which is free and open to the public.
Rider students chose the topic. “The film musical is probably among the first genres to which students were exposed in their earliest years, and it is a genre that continues to ‘sing’ to them in ever-changing ways,” says Dr. Cindy Lucia, director of Rider's Film and Media Studies Program, which is presenting the symposium.
Dr. Desiree Garcia of Dartmouth University will appear as the keynote speaker on March 6 at 6:30 p.m. Her topic is "Everything Old Is New Again: The Musical as Archive.”
Garcia, an associate professor of film and media studies and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies, is not only a film musical scholar but also a film musical actor. She is author of The Migration of Film Musical: From Ethnic Margins to American Mainstream (2014, Rutgers University Press), and she had the eponymous starring female role in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009), the first feature film of Damien Chazelle, who went on to direct Whiplash, La La Land and First Man.
Garcia will speak about the contemporary musical, including La La Land, A Star is Born and The Greatest Showman and some non-American musicals like The Burden and Dancer in the Dark. She will also speak about her work as a musical actor working with Chazelle on his first feature film.
The symposium will also include Dr. Margaret Schleissner as a featured speaker on March 7 at 6:30 p.m. A Rider Professor Emeritus of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, as well as a Film and Media Studies faculty member, Schleissner will speak about the iconic musical that continues to resonate — perhaps even more at the current moment than it did when it first hit the Broadway stage in 1966 and then the Hollywood screen in 1972. Her topic is "Cabaret: German History & Culture As Seen through '1960s' American Eyes."
“The symposium is especially exciting this year with a number of students and faculty members participating in panels and on roundtables, where they will speak about the widely varied musicals that have deeply resounded throughout their lives,” Lucia says.
All events take place in Rue Auditorium on Rider’s Lawrenceville campus. More details, including a full schedule, are available at www.rider.edu/events/film-symposium.
