Film Screening: Central Station (Brazil 1998)
March 11, 2026 - 6:00 pm
Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Film screening followed by a Q&A Session
Set in the vast, chaotic heart of Rio de Janeiro’s main train terminal, Central Station is a deeply human drama about loss, connection, and unexpected redemption. Dora, a hardened, retired schoolteacher, ekes out a living by writing letters for illiterate people at Central do Brasil station—letters she often never sends, having long lost faith in both love and honesty.
Her life shifts when she encounters Josué, a quiet nine-year-old boy whose mother dies suddenly in an accident at the station. Left alone in the city, Josué becomes Dora’s reluctant responsibility. What begins as an uneasy arrangement turns into a transformative journey when the two set out across Brazil’s impoverished countryside in search of the boy’s estranged father.
As they travel through dusty roads, forgotten towns, and fragile communities, Dora’s emotional armor slowly cracks. The journey forces her to confront her own grief, moral compromises, and capacity for compassion, while Josué searches not only for his father, but for belonging and stability in a world that has repeatedly failed him.
Intimate, restrained, and profoundly moving, Central Station is a meditation on motherhood, displacement, and human dignity. Through understated performances and naturalistic storytelling, the film captures the quiet miracles that arise when broken lives intersect—revealing how hope can emerge from the most unlikely encounters.
Jerry W. Carlson (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is professor and a historian of narrative forms with special expertise in narrative theory, the history of the novel, global independent film, and the cinemas of the Americas. From 2013 to 2022 he served as Chair of the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College CUNY. In addition, at the CUNY Graduate Center he is a member of the doctoral faculties of French, Comparative Literature, and Film & Media Cultures and a Senior Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies. He has lectured at Stanford, Columbia, Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Cuba), the University of Paris, and the University of Sao Paulo, among others. His current research is focused on how film and prose fiction from the Global South portray the histories and legacies of slavery, imperialism and colonialism. Moreover, he is an active producer, director, and writer with multiple Emmy Awards. As a Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created the series City Cinematheque about film history, Canapé about French-American cultural relations, and Nueva York (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City. As an independent producer, his work includes the Showtime Networks production Dirt directed by Nancy Savoca and Looking for Palladin directed by Andrzej Krakowski. In 1998, he was inducted by France as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques.
Curator & Moderator: Jerry W. Carlson, Senior Fellow, The Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies & Professor, The City College & Graduate Center, CUNY
TO REGISTER send email to bildner@gc.cuny.edu
