Media, Manipulation, and the Demise of Public Discourse
Our community enrichment cinema course continues in spring 2025. Participants will watch and discuss four movies focusing on the portrayal of mental health in film.
Each class session will include a pre-screening lecture followed by a showing of the film. Afterward, audience members will engage in conversation about the content events featured, the ways directors presented the subjects, and cinematic techniques used that may answer some questions while raising others.
Each class begins at 6:00 p.m. in Morgan Auditorium at Penn State Schuylkill’s Student Community Center.
Cost: $30 for community members
Free for Penn State Schuylkill students, faculty and staff members (see campus newsletter for details)
Film Schedule
Monday, January 27, 2025
A Beautiful Mind
(Ron Howard, 2021)
Four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, went to Ron Howard's engrossing drama about John Nash (Russell Crowe), the volatile Nobel Prize-winning mathematician.
Monday, February 24, 2025
Joker
(Todd Phillips, 2019)
Joker is the filmmaker’s original vision of the infamous DC villain, an origin story infused with, but distinctly outside, the character’s more traditional mythologies. Phillips’ exploration of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society.
Monday, March 17, 2025
American Beauty
(Sam Mendes, 1999)
An advertising executive (Kevin Spacey) has a midlife meltdown after becoming infatuated with his daughter's friend (Mena Suvari) and discovering his materialistic wife's infidelity. This Best Picture winner is a biting satire of middle-class suburban Americans in the late 1990s.
Monday, April 7, 2025
Gothika
(Mathieu Kassovitz, 2003)
After a car crash, a psychiatrist (Halle Berry) wakes up in a women's penitentiary and learns she's being held for her husband's murder. Miranda swears she's innocent, but is haunted by terrifying visions of a blond girl, images that may hold a key to the mystery.
Meet the instructor
This course is taught by Dr. D.J. Higgins, assistant teaching professor of film/video and music at Penn State Schuylkill. Dr. Higgins earned the Doctor of Philosophy in Modern Languages from Middlebury College and is an active filmmaker, having directed, written, and produced several award-winning short films.
For more community events at Penn State Schuylkill, check out the programming at Art Space.
