How to stream Oscar winners and nominated films

The full list of 2018 Oscar nominations was announced today!

"Get Out" was nominated for Best Picture, Director, and Lead Actor.

image source

Did you know you can watch "Get Out" on our SWANK streaming database?

Check out Kanopy for other Oscar nominated and winning films!

If you're interested in watching award-winning films, Alkek Library has a film screening and discussion series called Film Talks. Don't miss out on the chance to attend our screenings and participate in the conversation after with faculty, research librarians, and other university community members.

Take the Film Talks Quiz!

Free Movies, Expert-Led Discussion, and PRIZES!

Have you heard about 'Film Talks' at Alkek?

Watching a blank screen by Kenneth Lu, used under CC BY 2.0 / Text added to original and image cropped

Our new series, Film Talks, starts this month, with our kick-off event:
The Great Dictator showing on Sept 20th from 2-5pm in Alkek 105/106.
Join the Film Talks Facebook group to RSVP, share, and follow future events.

Event Details:

• Film starts at 2pm, with an introduction by Dr. Louie Valencia from the History Department.
• Dr. Valencia will lead a discussion following the film
• PRIZES will be given away in a social media contest, thanks to Kanopy Streaming database! Details to enter giveaway will be given out at the event.

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Prizes include:

Roku Streaming Stick
Cnet editors' choice 2016

Kanopy lined notebook, with elastic closure and ribbon bookmark

For more information about Film Talks please visit the library guide: bit.ly/alkekfilmtalks

Fall 2017 Film Talks Line-up

The Sounds of Silence: Practicing meditation over the Summer break

Image Source: http://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a17602

By now you've likely settled into your Summer break pattern. Maybe you've found yourself becoming one with your couch and binge-watching Netflix until the dreaded, "Are you still watching..." message pops up with the sole intention of guilting you into action.

Or maybe you're embracing some activity that fell dormant while you were racing towards the finish line of Spring's final exams and final projects.

Maybe the Central Texas pollen has you hiding under a blanket, only to reach out for a tissue and allergy pill.

Whatever routine you've found yourself in as Summer takes off, you're likely finding more free time for thoughts to run rampant in your head: Thoughts about classes, projects, graduation, THE FUTURE (that one needs all caps, always), next semester, vacations, finances, relationships, GPAs, grad school...

Yup, there they are - not too far from the surface after all.

I'm happy to report that the library has quite the collection of mindfulness and meditation resources. And you know you're going to find links to those resources in this blog post, right? What kind of blog post wouldn't have links?

My own journey into meditation involved my realizing that I can't turn my thoughts off, and therefore am impervious to meditation. The end.

Just kidding - I'm still trying to develop a regular meditation practice. I started a 10-day guided meditation program in December 2016, and I just completed Day 7 today. So, I'm moving right along. By this time next year, I'll be well on my way to a more restful mind.

What first gave me hope that I could learn to meditate was this TED talk by Andy Puddicombe:

Check out our collection of books by Andy Puddicome here (There's one of those links I promised).

Alkek also has a nice collection of guided meditation resources that might help you get started on your journey. We have books, e-books, audio books, streaming media, DVDs, pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich.

Sorry, I got off track (more on Forrest Gump here...).

Lastly, if you're more of the Netflix/Hulu/Amazon variety when you're between semesters, try downloading the Kanopy streaming app (look for it in your list of streaming channels), and check out this series on "Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation Course." You can access Kanopy through the library's databases, or by logging into the app with your University login.

For my part, I'm going to work my way through that practicing mindfulness course this summer, and finish up days 8-10 of my guided meditation this week. If all goes well, by the time the Fall semester sneaks up on us, I'll be breathing and meditating my way through all the stresses that inevitably follow.

If you have a meditation or mindfulness practice that works for you, share it in the comments below!

The Red Pill: A documentary by any other name...

I watched the documentary The Red Pill on our Kanopy streaming database earlier this week, and my foundation feels cracked now. My attempt to comprehend the film has become such a constant thought, churning in my head all week, tumbling over and over again like a pebble, waiting to be made smooth; yet every time I pick it up again, I cut myself on the edge. I can't come to a conclusion. I need guidance from trusted sources - to tell me which way to lean on this, and which filter to apply - which lens to look through. The metaphors could go on for days... anything to keep me from diving into the real controversy.

For those not aware, The Red Pill is a documentary made by Cassie Jaye, a self-identifying feminist and documentarian, about her journey into the world of Men's Rights Activists (MRA's). I had not heard of MRA's before watching this documentary, so I had no opinions going in. In fact, I mistakenly thought the documentary was about the Reddit forum by the same name. The Guardian describes that Reddit forum: "The online community hosted on Reddit is where men go to air their toxic views about women." Thus, I started the documentary fully expecting to learn more about this reddit group, and equally expecting to be angry with what I learned. I was very upset by the end of the film, but for entirely different reasons.

A little about me: I identify as a feminist. I learned in Women's Studies classes in the mid 90's to say, "I advocate feminism," as a stepping stone to saying, "I am a feminist." Most of us were newly learning about racism, classism, and sexism (in an academic setting anyway - we had witnessed inequalities our whole lives, but didn't have the same words or understanding of them until we began studying them as concepts).

I need to take a moment to define "feminism" for everyone reading this. It's important that we're on the same page - especially for further analysis of this film. "Feminism" to me, is the movement that pushes for equality between all people, men and women alike. My definition would need to be updated (from the 90's) to include people who don't identify as men or women. We could shorten the definition, and clarify it, by stating that, "Feminism states that all people are equal, and should be treated as such."

When I started my education in Women's Studies, there was a back and forth between students and some professors that used to go like this:

Professor: What is feminism?
Student: That women should be equal to men.
Professor: Which men?
Student: Huh?
Professor: Not all men are considered equal...

Welcome to the beginning of my undergraduate education.

A little more about me: I was raised by a feminist mother. And father for that matter, though I don't remember him using the word. I sometimes joke that my mother read me Gloria Steinem as bedtime stories, but it's not that far from the truth. All my bedtime stories were likely read to me through a feminist frame (for which I'm grateful), and my signed copy of Steinem's book of essays was my second-most prized possession in high school (the first being my signed copy of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye).

My bookshelf is full of feminist literature - Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Steinem, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Adrienne Rich, Caitlin Moran, Roxane Gay... I'm going from memory, and I'm surely missing some big ones. Many of my books were given to me by my mother; in the front flap of each book are small (now yellowing) pieces of paper, on which she wrote the date and a brief message describing why this was one of her favorite books. I cherish the books, but I cherish those slips of paper more.

So now you know a little about my foundation. Which is important for this discussion.

The rest of this will include spoilers about the film The Red Pill. If you don't want to know what the documentary reveals, you should stop reading now.

The Red Pill describes a men's movement that feels left behind by the feminist movement. Cassie Jaye interviews men, some of whom once belonged to the feminist movement, but left it when they felt that their own causes weren't given equal treatment. Others did not describe themselves as ever being feminist, but they make clear distinctions between "feminism" and "radical feminism." The latter, according to them, being much worse.

What about all of this belongs on a Librarian's Blog? Perhaps I should have started with that question. After watching the film (on one our library's databases), I got into a discussion with a graduate student from our Social Work program. I knew that this student was focusing her recent research on programs created for boys. She had been looking for resources that discussed boys falling behind in education, and this film covered that topic very briefly towards the end. I suggested the film to her, as a resource for her final project, and we fell into a discussion about the overarching theme of the film. Given that this student and I see the world through different paradigms, it was a very interesting conversation.

I was struck with the idea to show this film to a larger audience (as part of a library film series), and host a discussion afterward. We have the great privilege, as a University Library, of being surrounded by students, staff and faculty who could all contribute to an engaging (and challenging) discussion of these themes. The Library has been hosting a Civil Discourse series, which has been popular with the students. I saw this film, and potential discussion, as being in the same vein.

If you're still reading, now would be a good time to throw in the quick and dirty #elevatorspeech on Information Literacy (I promise it's quick, and mostly painless). We live in the time of "Fake News." Librarians the world round have dusted off of their capes, pulled on their superhero boots, and created libguides and lesson plans to help in the quest for Credible Information, and Reliable Sources.

Given my background as a research and instruction librarian, I set to work looking for sources to better evaluate The Red Pill. If you've never seen a Librarian in crisis, you should have been in my office last Monday. What I discovered is that there is not a consensus on the credibility and value of this film. I compiled a list of sources, including their bias-rating.

The short of it (from left to right):

• An open letter from David Futrelle published online essentially calls the film, "a feature-length advertisement" both bought and paid for by the "Men's Human Rights Movement."

• The Village Voice calls the director a "proproganist," and questions whether she left out pertinent information about one of the main subjects in her film. 

• The Huffington Post Film Review calls it a, "well-crafted, poignant and insightful film.” 

• BBC reports that, “Cassie tells me that she is still passionate about women’s issues, and is sad that making The Red Pill has branded her a traitor of women.” 

• The Guardian Austrialia, "... apologises for taking the bait," after the film's screening was cancelled at a Melbourne cinema. 

• The Federalist notes that "dissent is not allowed" from the feminist movement.

My own opinions include shades of all of the above arguments. I am sufficiently torn, which I think speaks to the power of this film. And the film has provided the starting place for many conversations in the past week. I would not go so far as to call it propaganda, but I would also not call it unbiased. I wished, through the entire film, that Cassie Jaye would interview a feminist with whom I could relate. The only self-identifying feminist in the film I could relate to was the director, and her denouncement of that title at the end felt devastating to me.

I do hope to host a screening of this film at our Library. And I also hope to find some faculty members who would be willing to help lead and moderate a discussion afterward.

Stephen R. Covey said, "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." Such a screening would require an abundance of listening to understand.

And Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

I hope (with all hope) that we can listen to each other, differences and all, and try to love the questions, and the differences, in the hopes to understand each other better, and come out on the other end, in a better place.

Thank you for listening.