Politics & Revolution, Saturday 21st February 2015

Syria Inside is a black comedy movie assembling the most tragic stories and the most funny creative productions from Syrian activists and artists. Presented in a new technology "Syrian 3D" and with unique Syrian black humour. You will get an insight to what humans are able to do - both good and bad - that let you see yourself in a different light. The producers Tamer AlAwam (Syria) and Jan Heilig (Germany) decided in 2011 to collaborate in a production full of unbelievable hilarious situations. In August 2012, in the middle of the production, Tamer was shot in Aleppo. The Syrian webshow - producers WithYouSyria and the German producer decided to finish the project.
Saturday 21st February 2015, 1pm Chakrabarti Room, JHBB

The checkpoint is closed: “Detour, detour!” shouts a taxi driver, announcing the beginning of yet another uncertain search for a way around the barriers curtailing Palestinian movement in the West Bank. Infiltrators is a visceral “road movie” that chronicles the daily travails of Palestinians of all backgrounds as they seek routes through, under, around, and over a bewildering matrix of barriers. Following this high stakes “game” of cat and mouse with a handheld video camera, Khaled Jarrar’s debut documentary was the standout success at the 2012 Dubai International Film Festival, winning the Muhr Arab Documentary Prize, the Special Jury Prize, and the International Critics Prize.
Saturday 21st February 2015, 3pm Chakrabarti Room, JHBB
In association with the Palestine Film Foundation and PART, the Palestine Regeneration Team. Introduced and discussed by Dr. Nasser Golzari and Dr. Yara Sharif, practicing architects and academics. Both are lecturers at Oxford Brookes University as well as the University of Westminster. Their work stretches between the UK and the Middle East, where they mainly look at design as a mean to facilitate and empower communities; all in search for spatial possibilities. Their practice NG Architects in London has developed a reputation of working on sustainable community projects with specific interest on issues of cultural identity and responsive design.They have been working extensively in Palestine with different organizations like UN-Habitat, British Council, as well local NGOs. They co-founded the Palestinian Regeneration Team (PART) along with Professor Murray Fraser. PART is a design-led research group that aims to search for creative and responsive spatial practices in Palestine to heal the fractures caused by the Israeli Occupation. They will be joined by Salem Al Qudwa, who has ten years of experience in architectural and design research, project construction management and coordination, and development for many projects in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. He has also worked with the Islamic Relief World Wide and the Norwegian Refugees Council, Gaza Office, as a Shelter Project Coordinator. As a tutor of architecture and a growing self-taught visual artist, he links theory, creative thinking with reality through architecture, urban design, landscape and art at open spaces. He recently enrolled as a full-time PhD by Design student at the school of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University.

Transcultural humanism: human rights and extremism, a lecture by Professor Roger Griffin, one of the world's foremost experts on the socio-historical and ideological dynamics of fascism, as well as the relationship of various forms of political or religious fanaticism, and in particular contemporary terrorism. Professor Griffin will give an insight into his paper Longing to Belong: Cultivating transcultural humanism in Modern Britain as a source of identity a Berendel Foundation publication focusing on the history of transcultural humanism, both in theory and practice, in the world's religious and secular cultures. This involves a variety of traditions of tolerance and fruitful coexistence with 'the Other' that exist in human history and could hopefully be reactivated to help address the many dilemmas that humanity now faces on a global and planetary level.
Saturday 21st February 2015, 5pm Chakrabarti Room, JHBB

Back Room Poets are a Oxford-based poetry group whose members benefit from twice-monthly workshops in the City Centre (there is also an affiliated workshop in North Oxford) and opportunities to participate in public readings, sometimes stand-alone, sometimes within the framework of local literary festivals, sometimes with featured guest readers.
Inge Milfull is half Australian, half German and was brought up in Germany, but she now chiefly writes in English. Her maternal grandmother’s family were Baptists of German descent from Kaunas in Lithuania and had already been displaced more than once before becoming refugees at the end of WWII. This is the subject of her poem, Three Sisters.
Merryn Williams is the founding editor of The Interpreter's House and has published three collections of poetry and a study of Wilfred Owen.
They will be joined by Louise Larchbourne and Hannah Caroe, who will be reading poems by David Olsen.
Saturday 21st February 2015, 6pm Chakrabarti Room, JHBB

A dramatic thriller based on real events, The Fifth Estate reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century's most fiercely debated organization. The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon they are breaking more hard news than the world's main media organisations. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society—and what are the costs of exposing them?
Saturday 21st February 2015, 7pm Chakrabarti Room, JHBB