CGS News

The NRC Web Portal launched officially on October 1, 2009. The Portal provides a public, consolidated and searchable database of activities of 125 National Resource Centers (NRCs), all supported under Title VI of the United States National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958. These activities include, but are not limited to, instruction, outreach, scholarly research, maintenance of library resources, and teacher training -- all focusing on particular regions of the world and their related challenges. The Portal represents a national capacity in modern foreign languages as well as area and international studies.

MUTUM, Director: Sandra Kogut

Portuguese, with subtitles in English
Brazil, 2007 (86 minutes)

Synopsis
Thiago is a sensitive and imaginative boy living on a small, hardscrabble farm in a remote region of Brazil. His life is filled not only with curiosity and youthful discovery, but also the reality of his parent's unhappy marriage and his father's abuse — all of which are one day changed by a chance encounter and unexpected gift. Director Sandra Kogut, in her poetic adaptation of the Brazilian short story Campo Geral, focuses on minute details of rural life to tell a bittersweet story of one boy's coming-of-age amidst events both great and small.

About the Director
Sandra Kogut was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1965. She began her career creating performance pieces and installations in Brazil, France and the United States. Her short films have won numerous awards at festivals worldwide and her work has been featured in many venues throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Harvard Film Archive and the Forum des Images. Mutum is her first feature film.

The Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois is pleased to announce that a collection of lectures are now available as podcasts through Illinois on iTunes U. You may access the collection with the following link: https://itunes.illinois.edu/auth/entry.do?method=publicStart