This month’s Meaningful Movie, Starving the Beast, will be shown as usual at the Keystone Church, 5019 Keystone Place N. on Friday, February 1 (the first Friday of the month). Doors open at 6:30. Admission is free, but donations are requested to cover costs. This showing represents a bit of a twofer as MM will also be celebrating its 16th anniversary.
Jim writes:
Meaningful Movies in Wallingford is celebrating our 16th anniversary at the Friday, February 1st screening of the documentary, “Starving The Beast,” followed by audience discussion and CAKE!
The 16TH ANNIVERSARY of the Meaningful Movies marks the year when we screened the first “meaningful movie” on Valentine’s Day in 2003. It began as a project of Wallingford Neighbors for Peace and Justice, which formed to protest the military intervention in Iraq.
In 2012, the Meaningful Movies Project (MMP) was established as a non-profit to support an ever-growing network of Meaningful Movies venues throughout western Washington. As these other venues became active, the original Wallingford venue tapered back from weekly to monthly screenings (1st Fridays of the month).Meaningful Movies in Wallingford has had wonderful support from several community groups: Essential Baking Company with their specialty breads, Cubes Baking Company with their cupcubes (aka cupcakes) and Damsel & Hopper Bakeshop with their delicious pastries. Tableau Software provided a grant to upgrade our projector and King County 4Culture Program and Rotary Club of Seattle have given grants for general support. Also, K&L Gates has provided pro bono legal advice on screening rights and intellectual property issues.
Starving the Beast examines the ways in which public universities have become a battleground for control over their curricula. From the MM website:
This film examines the on-going power struggle at publicly-funded universities across the nation as political and market-oriented forces push to disrupt and reform what is taught at America’s colleges, threatening their independence in choice of curriculum and tenure. The film documents a philosophical shift that seeks to reframe public higher education as a “value proposition” to be borne by the beneficiary of a college degree rather than as a “public good” for society. Financial winners and losers emerge in a struggle poised to profoundly change public higher education. The film focuses on dramas playing out at the University of Wisconsin, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, Louisiana State University, University of Texas and Texas A&M.
