Film Screening: Dirt (USA, 2003)
May 15, 2026 - 6:00 pm
Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Film screening followed by a Q&A Session
Set in the margins of suburban America, Dirt is a quiet, emotionally charged coming-of-age drama about abandonment, longing, and the search for identity. The film centers on a troubled teenage boy living with his emotionally distant father on the outskirts of town, near a scrap yard that becomes both his refuge and his prison.
Disconnected from school, authority, and meaningful relationships, the boy drifts through days marked by silence and suppressed anger. His life begins to shift when he forms tentative bonds with outsiders—figures who mirror his own sense of displacement—and starts to confront the unresolved wounds left by his absent mother. The “dirt” of the title becomes both literal and symbolic: the physical environment that surrounds him and the emotional residue he carries within.
As tensions at home escalate and the boy struggles to define himself beyond neglect and resentment, Dirt unfolds with restraint and raw realism. The film avoids melodrama, instead focusing on small gestures, unspoken emotions, and the slow, painful process of growing up without guidance.
Intimate and understated, Dirt is a portrait of youth on the edge—capturing how vulnerability, anger, and hope coexist in the quiet spaces where love is missing but still deeply desired.
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
