Films Worth Talking About, Even If Difficult: Halloween Edition: The Exorcist ?>

Films Worth Talking About, Even If Difficult: Halloween Edition: The Exorcist

The Office of the Arts & Sciences Dean and the Visual Arts Program present:
Films Worth Talking About, Even If Difficult: Halloween Edition: The Exorcist

The Exorcist

Directed in 1973 by William Friedkin, based on the 1971 novel by William Peter Blatty.
Thursday, October 30th, 6 pm, Rose Hill Keating 1st. All are welcome, so invite your friends. Pizza will be served on the early side.

Featuring:

Dr. Rachel Annunziato, Professor of Psychology, Vice Dean for Arts & Sciences; Father David Marcotte, S.J., Associate Professor of Psychology. Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Clinical Professor, Head of the Visual Arts Program, Dean Fellow, will moderate if things heat up. Two randomly chosen lucky winners will take home a terrifying prize.

About the film:
The Exorcist is a horror film released in 1973, directed by William Friedkin and written by William Peter Blatty, who adapted the screenplay from his 1971 novel of the same name. The story chronicles a single mother’s struggle to save her daughter from a mysterious ailment later revealed to be…

Spoiler alert—read no further!

…demonic possession. She enlists the help of two Roman Catholic priests, who attempt to perform an exorcism. The Exorcist was a massive commercial success, bringing in $428 million in its box-office run. It also earned 10 Academy Award nominations, including for best picture and director (the film would win two Oscars, for sound design and adapted screenplay). The Exorcist is a stylistic landmark for the supernatural horror genre and widely considered one of the greatest—and most unsettling—horror movies ever made.

Beyond the highly viceral and disturbing nature of the film, it is also a story about the challenges of modern medicine, the power of faith, doubt, sacrifice, redemption, love, and—of course, it is also about adult anxiety regarding teenage sexuality, loss of identity, motherhood, and the disintegration of the American family—you know, scary stuff—oh, and pea soup (you will know what I mean later).About the series:

For the Films Worth Talking About, Even If Difficult film series, we ask professors, administrators, and staff from across the university to present significant films to the Fordham community that might be unfamiliar or challenging. At screenings, we enjoy pizza together, watch a film, and then discuss it afterward.

As the series title suggests, the films selected, both old and new, are not always easy to digest or understand, and would benefit from thoughtful unpacking by people familiar with the film’s content. Our guest leaders guide attendees in exploring the film’s themes, characters, context, social impact, and stylistic choices. Ultimately, this is a communal exercise where we discuss, discover, and disagree sometimes—which is all part of the experience.

The Office of the Arts & Sciences Dean invites you to step outside your regular streaming queue, experience something different, and join a community of curious cinephiles throughout the year. Please bring your friends, an open mind, and be ready with a question. Additionally, to sweeten the deal, we offer raffle items connected to the film. You could walk away with a special prize AND a different point of view.

Up Next:

Coming in November is Mati Diop’s film, Dahomey, with special guests Associate Professor of African & African American Studies Professor Laurie Lambert and Associate Professor of Art History Maria Ruvoldt.

Previously:

Akira, directed in 1988 by Katsuhiro Otomo, and based on his 1982 manga Akira.
Sponsored by the FitzSimons Civics and Civility Initiative in collaboration with the Office of the Arts & Sciences Dean and the Visual Arts Program
Faculty panelists: Nushelle de Silva, Assistant Professor of Art History; Terrence Mosley, Adjunct Professor, Theatre Program; Anthony A. Berry, FitzSimons Fellow; and Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Clinical Professor, Head of the Visual Arts Program

Cartographer’s Tunnel ?>

Cartographer’s Tunnel

Paintings by Mason Saltarreli

The Fordham University Galleries
Ildiko Butler Gallery
October 10 – November 19, 2025
Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
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Cartographer’s Tunnel

Certain abstract paintings live as maps towards our interior labyrinth. Through their silent direction we might arrive into our deepest accommodations.

Not far from our front door on 60th Street towards the Hudson River was a hill which led to a tunnel. We would enter through a hole in the metal fence. Passing trains rolled by. People lived there. Each visit was mysterious.

On one occasion a man walking on the train tracks stopped and spoke with me as he was headed deeper into the tunnel. His eyes were experienced. The conversation was brief. I am grateful for his words.

Moments of surprise ferry oxygen to my internal incandescent candle. These paintings are some of its light.
— Mason Saltarrelli
 

Mason Saltarrelli navigates a bridge between beings and spirit by engaging with a succinct collection of discovered and abstracted characters and syllabaries. Painting and drawing intuitively—his expressiveness articulates continuing, woven motifs which invite unlimited exploration from the watcher. Saltarrelli’s jubilant work transforms human, animal and inanimate beings into buoyant embracing remembrances in an ever-evolving carousel of shape and color.

Mason Saltarrelli (b.1979, New Orleans, LA) graduated from Fordham College Lincoln
Center with a B.A. in Photojournalism in 2001. His work has been shown at Turn
Gallery, NYC, Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca, The Mass, Japan,
Meessen De Clercq, Belgium, Guild Hall, East Hampton, Ace Hotel, New Orleans,
Marvin Gardens, NYC, Galleri Jacob Bjorn, Denmark, Shrine Gallery, NYC, and Gallery
9, Australia among many others.

Ulrike Ottinger’s Shadows ?>

Ulrike Ottinger’s Shadows

screening + conversation

Thurs Oct. 2, 2025

7pm – 8:30pm (doors open 6:45), tickets here

Microscope Gallery | 525 W 29th St, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10001

Chamisso´s Shadow, photo Ulrike Ottinger, 2014 © Ulrike Ottinger

Ulrike Ottinger is described by Richard Brody of the New Yorker as “One of the crucial modern filmmakers… For Ottinger, the play of imagination is an essential realm of freedom, a way for women to defy and liberate themselves from the misogyny that’s embedded as deeply in consensus styles as in consensus politics.” As part of her New York tour, Ulrike Ottinger will screen an hour-long excerpt of her 12-hour long film, Chamissos Schatten (Chamisso’s Shadow, 2016) and then take part in a short conversation with scholar Dr. Nora Alter, who has written extensively about Ottinger’s work. More event info here. 

Chamisso´s Shadow, photo Ulrike Ottinger, 2014 © Ulrike Ottinger

6:45 PM – Doors Open

7:00 PM – Film Screening: Excerpt of Chamisso’s Shadows

8:00 PM – Post-Film Conversation with Nora Alter

8:30 PM – Program Concludes

Trockenfisch, das Brot der Nordländer, 2014 © Ulrike Ottinger

Chamisso´s Shadow, photo Ulrike Ottinger, 2014 © Ulrike Ottinger

About the film:

Chamisso’s Shadow (Germany 2016, 720 min [excerpt is 53 min])

Adelbert von Chamisso accompanied the Romanzow research expedition on the Rurik from 1815 to 1818 as a botanist. Inspired by his descriptions as well as those of the other great explorers such as Forster and Anderson with Captain Cook, Steller with Bering and Humboldt I came up with the idea to create a cinematic evocation of these travel experiences, both past and present. I believe the past and the present of these journeys belong together and can’t be separated just like poor Schlemihl and his shadow in Chamisso’s ‚Wondrous Story’, where Schlemihl seeks to recover and reinstate his lost shadow as he travels through the world.

“But there on the sunny sands, a human shadow, not unlike my own, slid past, wandering alone and seemingly strayed from his Master. This sight awakened in me a powerful drive: shadow, thought I, are you looking for thy Master? Your Master I will be.” – From Schlemihl by Adelbert von Chamisso

Readings from the many, very vivid, observations from those early explorers will be combined with my visual materials. Together they contrast and complement and enter into a dialogue that tells of the loss of knowledge of ancient cultural techniques and about learning a new. The desperation and the disintegration will be manifest but maybe, in some cases, this will provide a sense of relief, for it may show that it is only through comparison with the past that progress and change can be made visible.

Learn more about Ulrike Ottinger and Nora Alter:

Ulrike Ottinger 

Nora Alter

This event is presented by Fordham University and Microscope Gallery as part of the Fordham course Intro to Art & Engagement: Protest, Participation, the Public, and Other Performance Practices, taught by Catalina Alvarez.

Admission is free for all Fordham students with ID.

The event is conceived and organized by Catalina Alvarez, with co-organization by Jennifer Moorman. Support comes from Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning and the Departments of Theatre and Visual Arts, Communication and Media Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The film excerpt is courtesy of the Arsenal – Institute for Film & Video Art.

 B.O. / Jack Arthur Wood ?>

 B.O. / Jack Arthur Wood

RECEPTION SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20th 4-9pm

The Fordham University Galleries
Lipani Gallery
August 5 – October 31, 2025
Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
fordhamuniversitygalleries

In a garden, I kick at a cobblestone path. I ignore the other children and move toward my favorite plant. My licking leaf tree. I pull one of the leaves away and raise it to my mouth like a question. I turn it over, feeling the hairy side with my thumb as I run my tongue over the back of the leaf until it is floppy and creased, relishing the magic of sensation, absorbing fascination through my mouth and fingertips. Having always explored my world sensorially, I build spaces of color, light and material through multilayered painted and collaged surfaces.

The nature of things is more or less based on a binary. In my work I explore the inseparable combination of anxiety and joy I feel while anticipating the nature of things oscillating between two points, visualizing a way that binary space can be punctured and trespassed. Paint becomes an object when I cut from the cloth or page allowing me to try endless placements. Working symmetrically means each mark becomes conversational, and the subject or figure can
rest behind the static. All of the swatches affixed to my paintings and installations bring the body and mind into question as structures of bondage. I imagine the compulsively wrapped and strapped edges of my paintings as corporeal and contemplative armatures that hold spectral displays inside, visions of transcendence, clarity through chroma.
JAW


Artist Bio

Born, 1990 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Jack Arthur Wood Jr. is a visual artist, writer, curator and educator based in Ridgewood, Queens. Wood studied at Guilford College, in Greensboro, NC, receiving a BA in printmaking in 2012, and earned an MFA in printmaking from Texas A&M University — Corpus Christi in 2017. Wood received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting in 2024. He has been a resident at The Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, The Wassaic Project, The Jentel Foundation, Little Bear Hill, and Tiger Lily Press. Wood has had solo / two-person presentations at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY; My Pet Ram, New York, NY; Conduit Gallery, Ridgewood, NY; His work has been exhibited at Chozick Family Gallery, New York, NY; Chart, New York, NY; Geary Contemporary, Millerton, NY; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; 5-50 Gallery, Queens, NY; Field of Play Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH; Heaven Gallery, Chicago,IL. He currently teaches at Montclair State University, in New Jersey.

Ground Meets Water: Photographs by Michael Chovan-Dalton ?>

Ground Meets Water: Photographs by Michael Chovan-Dalton

Ground Meets Water:

Photographs by
Michael Chovan-Dalton

RECEPTION THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4th 6-8pm

The Fordham University Galleries
Ildiko Butler Gallery
June 9 – September 7, 2025
 Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
fordhamuniversitygalleries


In 1993 I moved to Hoboken, New Jersey and began to explore what this latest version of home was going to mean to me. After travelling along different NJ Transit rail lines, and wandering around different train stations, I found myself being drawn to ponds, reservoirs, and rivers that had become fishing holes for families. The spiritual and adventurous interactions between parents and children, along with the feeling that a tradition or an important skill was being passed along, was fascinating and beautiful to me.

I call this work Ground Meets Water because I always felt that there was a coming together at these fishing holes, a kind of “levelling of the playing field” with me and with others. People were generous with their time, their food, and their conversation and I am grateful for that.
— Michael Chovan-Dalton


Michael Chovan-Dalton is a photographer and Professor of Photography at Mercer County College in New Jersey and the Director of the JKC Gallery in Trenton NJ.  He is the producer of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf and the host of Real Photo Show podcasts. He is also a founding member and curator of the Homecoming Biennial at RIT and the media partner for the Chico Portfolio Review in Montana. His work is in the collections of SF MOMA and The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma. Chovan-Dalton received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and his MFA from Columbia University.
 

Marjuan Canady Visits “Arts, Social Justice, & Human Rights” Class ?>

Marjuan Canady Visits “Arts, Social Justice, & Human Rights” Class

Tony Nominated Broadway producer, entrepreneur, writer, director, and performer, Marjuan Canady (FCLC ’08), returned to campus on April 1st to discuss with “Arts, Social Justice, & Human Rights” students (taught by Fadi Skeiker) concepts in applied theater and the importance of forging one’s own path when navigating a career in the arts.

After graduating from Fordham with a degree in theatre and African and African American studies, Canady continued her studies at NYU Tisch which led to the production of her one-woman play “Girls! Girl? Girls.” Using this experience as a framework, Canady explained to students how they might use a grassroots approach to theater and production, and how to use theater to engage with topics that are meaningful to them. Canady also challenged students to consider the use of satire when tackling larger, societal issues. She presented them with several approaches to satire and explained the concepts using examples from her own production of “Girls! Girls? Girls.” to show how these techniques could be applied in their own work.

During this workshop, students were tasked with a solo theater exercise, in which they were instucted to identify an issue that they are passionate about and then create a monologue or scene using satire. Students explored three techniques of satire – exagerration, reversal, and parody – and were instructed to encorporate two of them into their monologue or scene. Through this exercise students where able to apprciate the power of satire and comedy when addressing potentially serious issues. By creating room for humor in the discussion, satire allows audiences to step back and address the “ridiculousness” of current societal issues. Through Canady’s teachings, students learned how to use applied theater to take deep issues that are often difficult to discuss, and to create a natural and intimate dialogue around these issues through performance.

“Arts, Social Justice, & Human Rights” Class Meets with NYC High School Students ?>

“Arts, Social Justice, & Human Rights” Class Meets with NYC High School Students

This week, the “Arts and Social Justice” class, taught by Fadi Skeiker, had the joy of welcoming eight incredible high school students from the NYCHA Amsterdam Houses Tenants Association in NYC. Together, students explored what it means to build, defend, and reimagine community through theatre.

In one of the central exercises, students were divided into two groups—each tasked with inventing a new island. One group imagined a naturalistic island, rooted in organic life and balance. The other built a technological island, wired and future-facing. They created chants, embodied their landscapes, and made frozen images that told the story of their worlds.

Then came the twist: an earthquake strikes, and one island must seek refuge on the other.
What followed was a powerful negotiation: Who gets to leave? Who gets to stay? What makes a place worth defending—and what makes it worth sharing?

Students debated migration, safety, resources, and identity with clarity and heart.

One student shared the insight: “It’s hard to ask for help when you’ve been made to feel less than.”

This class focused on presence rather than performance, and was about using theatre as a space to listen, imagine, and witness one another. This exercise served as a reminder that justice work starts in rooms like this—with questions, collaboration, and care.

This visit was supported by Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) at Fordham University.