Kansas City Kansas Community College

FRIDAY 9/4 & 25/2009*
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 121 min. R
Synopsis: On the verge of winning the grand prize on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," Jamal, a Mumbai office boy with little formal education, is arrested as a cheater. Relating the story of his and his brother’s difficult lives in the city’s slums to the police, the keys to Jamal’s knowledge and the reason he went on TV are revealed.
INDIA

FRIDAY 10/9/2009  
Music Within (2007) 94 min. R
Synopsis: Inspiring true story of Richard Pimentel (Ron Livignston), a Vietnam veteran who suffered hearing loss in combat and later became a crusader for the rights of the handicapped, teaming with a wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy-afflicted young man and working with him to help get the Americans with Disabilities Act passed.
DISABILITIES

FRIDAY 10/23/2009
The Soloist (2009) 116 min. PG-13
Synopsis: An encounter with a homeless  man playing a two-stringed  violin on the  streets of Los Angeles leads a journalist to  write about the musician, a former Julliard  prodigy suffering from schizophrenia.  But when he reaches out to help the combative   homeless man, neither man is prepared for what follows.  Based on a true story by L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez.
DISABILITIES 

FRIDAY 11/6&20/200*
Milk (2008) 129 min. R
Synopsis: Sean Penn garnered a Best Actor Academy Award as San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to major public office.  Milk becomes an activist icon in the city’s Castro District on the cusp of a new civil rights movement in the 1970’s, clashing with colleague Dan White who would go on to assassinate Milk and Mayor George Moscone in 1978.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION

FRIDAY 12/4/2009
The Italian (2005) 99 min. PG-13
Synopsis: In a small Russian village, a 6-year old boy who was abandoned by his mom spends his days living in a run-down orphanage.  When an Italian couple decides to adopt him and take him back to their country with them, he embarks on a life-changing journey as he attempts to track down the mother who left him behind.
RUSSIAN

FRIDAY 2/5/2010
Cadillac Records (2008) 109 min. R
Synopsis: Biopic about the formation of Chicago-based Chess Records focuses on Leonard Chess whose ambitious venture brings artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Etta James into the limelight. While their influence and popularity grow during the 1940s and '50s, the musical "family" experiences its share of hurt and heartbreak.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN

DATE:  TO BE ANNOUNCED
Traces of the Trade (2008) 86 min.
Documentary: Filmmaker Katrina Browne discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade and gain a powerful new perspective on the black/white divide. Given the myth that the South is solely responsible for slavery, viewers will be surprised to learn that Browne’s ancestors were Northerners.

FRIDAY 3/5/2010
Persepolis (2007) 95 min. PG-13
Synopsis: Marjane Satrapi's memoir of growing up in Iran comes to the screen in this bittersweet animated film of her graphic novels. As the Islamic Revolution of 1978 brings a repressive theocracy to power, little Marjane becomes dangerously outspoken when women's liberties are targeted. Later sent to Vienna for her education, she confronts cultural prejudices and the growing pains of young adulthood.
IRANIAN

FRIDAY 3/26/2010
La Vie En Rose (2007) 141 min. PG-13
Synopsis: French singer Edith Piaf's captivating life story is told in this acclaimed drama. First discovered during her impoverished childhood in Paris, the voice of the "Little Sparrow" brings her acclaim, but a doomed affair with boxer Marcel Cerdan and a bout with morphine addiction contribute to the suffering she endures before her tragic death in 1963.
FRENCH

FRIDAY 4/9/2010
The Visitor (2008) 104 min. PG-13
Synopsis: Compelling drama in which a college professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) befriends immigrant couple Tarek and Zainab after finding they've taken up residence in his seldom-used apartment. When Tarek is arrested and scheduled to be deported, Walter attempts to have him freed—rediscovering what is important to him in the process.
IMMIGRATION