DiMenna-Nyselius Library is home to an abundant film and music collection. For Summer 2010, we celebrate our foreign-language films through our International Film Exhibit which highlights the many contributions of people around the world who have elevated our global culture through the medium of film.

The large exhibit cases in the lobby house both old and new examples of the best in foreign-language film. The first case is devoted to The Classics. We define classics as any film that pre-dates 1990 and the director is no longer with us. Names such as Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa, Fassbinder, Bunuel, Eisenstein, and Ray are just a few of the many directors in this category. Iconic, vintage, flawless and quintessential are several words that begin to describe many of these seminal works.

The second case features modern works from the past 20 years (post-1990). We titled this case, The Moderns to stress how exciting and heart-racing this new generation of filmmakers work can be. Art House can only describe this breed of auteurs if one imagines a modern art gallery full of color, aggression, passion and beauty. Names you’ll want to look out for include Eytan Fox, Pedro Almodovar, Deepa Mehta, Tom Tykwer, Wong Kar-Wai, Yimou Zhang, Fatih Akin, Claire Denis, Ousmane Sembane and Arnaud Desplechin. This list of filmmakers only begins to scratch the surface of who is out there today making cutting edge world cinema.

The six flat cases located at the bottom of the staircase represent film industry from the perspective of the six continents (other than North America) of the world. Each case includes examples of films we have in our collection and film studies print books available to compliment.

It is our hope that after observing the exhibit, patrons will take home a film or two from our collection and begin to explore the wealth of our collection.