The Ubuntu International Film Series: Sleep Dealer Online
MSU Libraries in partnership with the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program presents the Ubuntu International Film Series.
Ubuntu: a Zulu word translated as humanity that has become a global philosophical principle: “I am because we are.”
The two-week film series (Monday-Thursday) includes eight unique films from different global contexts. The film screenings will be followed by discussions with local and African experts who will explore global evocations of the concept of Ubuntu. The closing in-person screening and panel discussion is on April 3 at TBD.
All events are free and open to the public. Online registration is required to access the zoom events.
The film series is co-sponsored by the MSU Library, the African Studies Center, the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program and the Institute for Ubuntu Thought and Practice. For more information contact Erik Ponder, the African Studies librarian: ponderer@msu.edu
Click here for the full film series schedule.
- Date:
- Wednesday, March 26, 2025 Show more dates
- Time:
- 12:00pm - 2:00pm
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Online:
- This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.
Film: Sleep Dealer (Directed by Alex Rivera, USA 2008: 90 minutes)
Sleep Dealer is a science-fiction set on the U.S. / Mexico border that tells the story of Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña), a young man from Mexico who dreams of coming to the United States. However, in this brave new borderland, crossing is impossible, and Memo ‘migrates’ in a new way — over the net. By connecting his body to the net Memo controls a machine that performs his labor in America, sending his pure work without the body of the worker.
Discussant: Dr. Sheila Contreras (Michigan)
Associate professor in the Department of English, Contreras was Director of MSU’s Chicano/Latino Studies Program and Associate Dean for DEI and Curriculum in the College of Arts & Letters. Her recent essays (“The Spanish-Indian Binary and Anti-Blackness as Literary Inheritance”) appear in Latinx Literature in Transition, 1848-1992 (Cambridge UP, 2025) and in Sociology of Race & Ethnicity. Her monograph, Blood Lines: Myth, Indigenism and Chicana/o Literature (University of Texas Press), received Honorable Mention for the Modern Language Association Annual Prize in Chicana/o and Latina/o Literary Studies. Additional research and teaching interests include Women’s literatures, Young Adult literatures and modern American literature more broadly. Her latest project investigates the relationship between curriculum and achievement in Latinx undergraduate education.