The documentary “God Loves Uganda” and the critically-acclaimed Italian drama “The Great Beauty” open Jan. 10 at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center. Both films are not rated and play through Jan. 16.
In “God Loves Uganda,” Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams explores the role of the American Evangelical movement in fueling the African nation’s turn towards biblical law and a proposed death penalty for homosexuality.
Thanks to charismatic religious leaders and a well-financed campaign, the new draconian laws and the politicians that peddle them are winning over the Ugandan public. However, the policies and the money that fuels them are not coming from Africa; they’re being imported from some of America’s largest mega-churches.
Using cinema vérité, interviews and hidden camera footage, the film allows American religious leaders and their young missionaries that make up the “front lines in a battle for billions of souls” to explain their positions.
“The Great Beauty” — named Best Foreign Film during the 2014 Golden Globe awards on Jan. 12 — features Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella, a journalist who has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome.
Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, Gambardella has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and social circles. However, when his 65th birthday coincides with a shock from the past, the journalist unexpectedly takes stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory — a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
For more information on films at the Ross, go to http://www.theross.org.
