April Highlights

Organization of Black Students
Annual George E. Kent Lecture: Nikki Giovanni
7 p.m. Friday, April 22
International House, Assembly Hall, 1414 E. 59th St. Free.

Esteemed poet, essayist and activist Nikki Giovanni will deliver the 2005 George E. Kent Lecture. Giovanni has written over 24 books, and much of her work, such as Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement, reflects on the complexities of African-American identity. Giovanni has received several NAACP Image Awards for literature. The annual Kent Lecture honors the contributions of George Kent, an African American who was a Professor in English Language & Literature at Chicago from 1970 until his death in 1982. Previous lecturers have included Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Angela Davis and Sonya Sanchez.

The Committee on Cinema & Media Studies
Filmmaker Guy Maddin
Saturday, April 23 through Thursday, April 28
All events will be held in Max Palevsky Cinema, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St. 834-1077. http://filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu/navevents.html.

The films of Guy Maddin, the Nuveen Visiting Filmmaker at the University, will be screened on campus, and Maddin will be present to comment and lecture. Maddin employs the language of past cinema to create work that has been called “as beautiful as it is confounding.” At 2 p.m. Saturday, April 23, Doc Films invites viewers to a Guy Maddin double feature, with screenings of Cowards Bend the Knee and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 27, there will be a free screening of Maddin’s film The Saddest Music in the World, which will be introduced by the director. A Q-and-A session will follow. Maddin will give a talk titled “Goat Glands, Carpet Underlay and Cinema Sat Backwards” at 5 p.m. Thursday, April 28, in Max Palevsky Cinema.

The University of Chicago Presents
Le Concert des Nations and Jordi Savall, Viola da gamba
8 p.m. Friday, April 15
Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St. 702-8068. http://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu. $30 general, $11 students.

Legendary gambist Jordi Savall and his Baroque orchestra Le Concert des Nations will present a program of 17th-century music. The program, entitled “Les Gouts Rèunis,” will feature a variety of Baroque gems, such as Johann Pachelbel’s Canon. A native of Barcelona, Spain, Savall inspired renewed interest in French Baroque music after recording the popular soundtrack to the 1992 film Tous les Matins du Monde. In conjunction with the concert, the Smart Museum of Art will hold a pre-concert dinner and discussion. Robert Kendrick, Associate Professor and Chair of Music, and Anne Leonard, Mellon Projects Curator at the Smart Museum, will lead a gallery talk of the exhibition “Paper Museums,” incorporating music that will be played at the concert. The dinner will begin at 6 p.m. at the Smart Museum, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave., and tickets are $75 general, $65 Smart Museum members. These prices include a ticket to the concert.

International House
Notes of Hope: A Concert to Support Education in India
6 p.m. Saturday, April 23
International House, Assembly Hall, 1414 E. 59th St. http://www.ashanet.org/notesofhope. Tickets start at $20 general, $12 students and seniors.

This concert will feature Grammy Award-winning guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and sitar maestro Kushal Das. A musical disciple of Ravi Shankar, Bhatt invented the Mohan Veena, an instrument that blends the elements of the Veena, a traditional Indian string instrument, with a Western-style guitar. The Mohan Veena has 19 strings that are under extremely high tension, and Bhatt has won international acclaim for his performances on the unique instrument. Das was born into a highly regarded musical family in Calcutta and is one of India’s most admired sitarists today. All of the proceeds for the concert will benefit ASHA Chicago, a group that advocates for basic education in the most impoverished areas of India.