Grad student-run Trojka film series gains momentum

After a year's hiatus, Trojka, a bi-weekly student-run international film series, returned to Homewood in March. The season premiered with the Zhang Zimou tale The Road Home, a movie centered on two youths living in a remote Chinese village during the nation's cultural revolution.

Trojka, founded by three Russian graduate students, not surprisingly stands for "three." Initially designed to show only Russian and eastern European movies, Trojka decided to expand its showings to most internationally renowned films. When two of the founding members graduated, it was run by one of the students for about two years. After he graduated, Trojka then went into a state of dormancy until its revival this past semester.

Since then the trifecta has expanded and four members now run the film series: Saurabh Aggarwal, Srivatsun Sadagopan, Gaja Jarosz and Steffen Reinhold. Sadagopan and Aggarwal had originally formed the Indian movie group called Tarang, which predominantly screened popular Hindi films. Then with the opportunity to revive Trojka, the two joined together with fellow graduate students Jarosz and Reinhold to show internationally popular films.

Funded by the Graduate Representative Organization (GRO) and the Graduate Student Organization, the four students pay for the use of each movie's rights for each and every showing. It is illegal to show films to a mass audience without such permission.

"Since we are buying rights for these movies, and showing for free, we have a great budget limitation. Sharing this cost with other organizations can help us show more and better movies," says Aggarwal, who is continually looking for other student groups to partner with.

And they do get the audience they need to continue showing films. This past week's showing of Kandahar, an Iranian film made in 1996, drew around 50 people, while screening Y Tu Mama Tambi??n (And Your Mother Too), drew an audience of about 120 people. The group would still like to expand their publicity in order to bring bigger crowds, and possibly collect more funding.

The actual movie selection is done by the four organizers, based on international reviews, the popularity of the film, as well as the cost of buying rights. In the future, however, a prospectively larger audience will allow the selection process to become more democratic. In the meantime the list was compiled "to make a diverse representation of the world culture," says Aggarwal.

The group not only wishes to expand their audience base to undergraduates and faculty, but also to host an International Cultural Night for every movie screening. They also plan to contact embassies in Washington D.C. in the hopes of enlisting financial support, and in the meantime they are working to expand their screening to the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution (JHMI). The highlight of these showings and the proposed cultural night could possibly involve speeches and discussions about the movie and historical or social context.

"Our future shows might also begin with a short contextual talk on the movie/director/actor and its relevance to the culture of that country. These might be invited talks or short brief ups by one of the organizers," says Aggarwal.

The next Trojka sponsored movie night will show White, a Polish film directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski on April 22, and then The Pillow Book, a British film directed by Peter Greenaway on May 6. Each showing is free and located in Shaffer 3.

For information on upcoming shows check out http://www.jhu.edu/trojka