The Peace Center has added two documentary film screenings to the schedule for October:

 

The Music of Strangers

Wednesday, Oct. 9, at 7 p.m.; Gunter Theatre; FREE, but tickets are required

 

The Grammy^®-nominated documentary The Music of Strangers follows Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silkroad Ensemble as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.

 

Blending performance footage, personal interviews, and archival film, Oscar^®-winning director Morgan Neville and producer Caitrin Rogers focus on the personal journeys of a small group of Silkroad Ensemble mainstays — Kinan Azmeh (Syria), Kayhan Kalhor (Iran), Yo-Yo Ma (France/United States), Wu Man (China) and Cristina Pato (Spain) — to chronicle passion, talent and sacrifice. Through these moving individual stories, the filmmakers paint a vivid portrait of a bold musical experiment and a global search for the ties that bind.

 

Silkroad Ensemble will perform in the Peace Concert Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 12.

 

Thank You For Coming

Friday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m.; Gunter Theatre; $10

 

Documentary filmmaker Sara Lamm discovered as an adult that she was conceived via sperm donor. It’s taken 11 years, 12 DNA tests, five ancestry databases, one potential half-sister and 900 sixth cousins to (maybe) find her biological father. Thank You For Coming is a genealogical detective story and a funny, bittersweet meditation on love, loss, friendship and family.

 

Thank You For Coming premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, screened at DOC NYC, and was broadcast widely on PBS. Lamm also co-directed Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives, which won the Audience Award at the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival, was released theatrically in the United States, and was screened in community and academic venues all over the world (including at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica). Her 2007 film Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox was also released theatrically and had its television premiere on the Sundance Channel. In addition, her work has appeared at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, The American Visionary Art Museum and on NPR.

 

*****

 

Tickets are available by calling 864.467.3000 or 800.888.7768, in person at the Peace Center Box Office or online at peacecenter.org. Tickets are available to Peacekeepers now and will be available to the public on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 10 a.m. Service fees will apply to phone and online sales.