Embrace of the Serpent: Screening and Discussion

July 25, 2017 - 4:00 pm

Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY

Summer Film Series

A film by Ciro Guerra

(Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film)

Moderator: Jerry Carlson, The City College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

The story of the relationship between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his people, and two scientists who work together over the course of 40 years to search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant. Shot along the border of Colombia and Brazil, it unfolds in two different historical periods, and features a script developed in consultation with native tribes.

Jerry Carlson (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Director of the Cinema Studies Program in the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College, CUNY. He is a specialist in narrative theory, global independent film, and the cinemas of the Americas. He is a member of the doctoral faculties of French, Film Studies and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, CUNY and a Senior Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies. Carlson has lectured at Stanford, Columbia, Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Cuba), the University of Paris, and the University of São Paulo, among others. His current research is focused on how slavery and its legacy in the New World have been represented in film, literature, and music.
Carlson is an active producer, director, and writer with multiple Emmy Awards. As a Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created and produces the series CITY CINEMATHEQUE about film history, CANAPE about French-American cultural relations, and NUEVA YORK (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City. In 1998 he was inducted by France as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes.