Tag Archives: Leuphana University Lüneburg

From the Lifeless Pages of History Books to the Big Screen: Chinonye Chukwu’s Till (2022)

By Sabrina Völz

“The lynch­ing of my son has shown me that what hap­pens to any of us

any­where in the world had bet­ter be the busi­ness of us all.”

Mamie Till-Bradley in Till

Photo credit: Maxim Hopman
Pho­to cred­it: Max­im Hopman

The name Till is one that most Amer­i­cans and many peo­ple around the world will rec­og­nize from their civ­il rights his­to­ry lessons. In 1955, while vis­it­ing fam­i­ly, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chica­go, was bru­tal­ly beat­en and mur­dered for alleged­ly flirt­ing with and whistling at a mar­ried white woman near Mon­ey, Mis­sis­sip­pi. His bloat­ed body was lat­er found in the Tal­la­hatchie River.

I must admit that when I first heard about the film Till, it imme­di­ate­ly sparked my curios­i­ty. Yes, I thought. The heinous crime that caused a media fren­zy and gal­va­nized the civ­il rights move­ment needs to be brought to new gen­er­a­tions. But wait. We live in an age of trig­ger warn­ings (state­ments that alert read­ers or view­ers to poten­tial­ly dis­turb­ing con­tent) and audi­ences with a height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ty to vio­lence. So how can film direc­tor Chi­nonye Chuk­wu draw view­ers to movie the­aters and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly do jus­tice to the bru­tal­i­ty of that crime?

It also intrigued me that Chuk­wu placed Emmett Till’s moth­er, Mamie Till-Bradley, in the film’s cen­ter. If she’s men­tioned at all in Amer­i­can his­to­ry text­books, it’s main­ly to rec­og­nize the role she played in the deci­sion to show the world what South­ern hatred looked like. She was the dri­ving force to ensure an open cas­ket at Emmett Till’s funer­al. So what does the film reveal that most his­to­ry books do not?

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The Environmental Impact of Filmmaking

By Jannik Schümann

Two things you should know about me that at first glance might have noth­ing in com­mon: First, I love to watch movies and series – to dive into oth­er worlds, to escape from real­i­ty, and just to have a good time. For me, there’s noth­ing bet­ter than going to the movies or lying on the couch on a rainy Sun­day, watch­ing a good movie, or bing­ing a series. I even play a piv­otal role in their cre­ation as I work as an actor myself. Sec­ond, I con­scious­ly try to live sus­tain­ably because what we con­sume or do has a direct impact on the world’s ecosys­tems. I don’t eat meat, I don’t dri­ve a car; instead, I use my bike or pub­lic trans­port. And I pay atten­tion to labels to sup­port com­pa­nies ded­i­cat­ed to sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion and fair wages for laborers.

Pho­to cred­it: Dominic Wunderlich

Two years ago, when I first read about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of film­mak­ing in The Guardian, I was shocked. I hadn’t real­ized that my love for movies and for my job could seri­ous­ly con­flict with my ded­i­ca­tion to the envi­ron­ment. Because the truth is: Block­buster films with bud­gets of over $70 mil­lion pro­duce an aver­age of 2,840 tons of CO2 per pro­duc­tion. That is equiv­a­lent to 11 one-way trips from the earth to the moon!

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An A‑May-zing Month for Animals

By Maryann Henck

I like to think of May as one of the most amaz­ing months – not only because it’s Nation­al Pet Month, but also because May 20 is Nation­al Res­cue Dog Day in the Unit­ed States. Let’s face it: Pets are so much more than just cute com­pan­ions – they are fluffy fam­i­ly and friends as well as end­less sources of com­fort, joy, and hope. But what about all those ani­mals out there who don’t have a human to look after them, love them back, and maybe even save them from hor­ri­ble fates?

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Recognizing a Freak: An Atheist Reads Flannery O’Connor

By Raul Quinque

Pho­to Cred­it: flan­nery o’con­nor and pea­cock pub­lished by will (50 watts)

The read­er and the writer. Two sides of the same coin. Par­don, the same page. Rela­tion­ship sta­tus: It’s com­pli­cat­ed since only one gets to state what’s on their mind. Thus, it’s only fair to talk back via text. Flan­nery O’Connor (1925–1964) may be long gone from this world, but her lit­er­a­ture endures as an eter­nal mes­sage. And so does the ques­tion how an athe­ist-by-con­vic­tion con­nects to Catholic O’Connor’s South­ern Goth­ic reli­gious themes.

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Found in Translation

By Raul Quinque

Wish I could read this. Cred­it: Janayugam arti­cle on Soft­ware Free­dom & lan­guage Com­put­ing by Ani­var Aravind, https://www.flickr.com/photos/technopolitrix/1414813791/in/photostream/

Full dis­clo­sure: I’ve writ­ten this blog on my behalf. Or in eigen­er Sache, as I would say in Ger­man. Is there a dif­fer­ence between the two expres­sions? Worlds, I would say, as some­one who is pre­oc­cu­pied with lan­guage trans­la­tion most days of the week. In light of the rapid pro­lif­er­a­tion and evo­lu­tion of machine-learn­ing trans­la­tors, here’s to what makes think­ing, speak­ing, and writ­ing with diverse lan­guages invalu­ably human.

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Thank You for Your Attention: Of the Unending Struggle with Digital Distractions

By Nina Preußler

How many hours have you already spent look­ing at a screen today? Nowa­days, the uni­ver­sal answer to this ques­tion seems to be “too much.” As the inter­net becomes more deeply ingrained in every aspect of our lives, it gets trick­i­er and trick­i­er to find respon­si­ble ways of engag­ing with the online world with­out get­ting lost in it. This issue became even more chal­leng­ing for many peo­ple dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, for exam­ple, found that young peo­ple now spend an aver­age of 7.7 hours of their dai­ly free time in front of screens – twice as much as they did pre-COVID. Why is the inter­net so wicked­ly tempt­ing, and how can we estab­lish health­i­er dig­i­tal habits?

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