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Sunday November 19, 2006, at 6:30 PM

Life Lessons

A Short Film by: Martin Scorsese
Starring Nick Nolte and Rosanna Arquette

Nick Nolti stars in this passionate tale of a world – famous painter torn between his obsession for his art and his infatuation with his sultry but unresponsive assistant (Rosanna Arquette).

Blackboards
A Film by: Samira Makhmalbaf

With Bahman Ghobadi, Said Mohamadi,
and Behnaz Jafari

Samira Makhmalbaf is the daughter of the distinguished director Mohsen, and not surprisingly grew up in a filmdominated household. She first appeared on screen at the age of one month, and at eight played a leading role in her father's The Cyclist. She attended film school at fifteen, and was assistant director on his The Silence.At eighteen she directed The Apple, a film based on the true case of a father who locked his two young daughters away from the outside world (with the real-life people playing themselves on screen), which made her the youngest director to have a film officially selected for Cannes. Blackboards is her second feature.

It takes place in the mountains of Kurdistan, on the border between Iran and Iraq. A group of teachers walk through thisdesolate landscape, their blackboards on their backs, in search of pupils, desperate to trade knowledge for basic subsistence. One of them, Reeboir (Bahman Ghobadi) finds a group of young boys who risk their lives smuggling contraband over the border. Said (SaidMohamadi) joins a group of old men, refugees from the seven-year Iran/Iraq war, who are returning to their Iraqi homeland. With them is one very ill man's daughter, Halaleh (Behnaz Jafari), a widow with a young son