Provided

Filmmaker Will Gluck ’93 (shown on the set of “Annie” with actors Bobby Cannavale and Jamie Foxx) visits campus to meet with students and discuss his career in a public talk Oct. 16.

Making it in movies

Filmmaker Will Gluck ’93, the director of “Easy A,” “Fired Up” and “Annie,” comes to campus for a free public lecture as this year’s Munschauer Career Series speaker, Friday, Oct. 16 at 5 p.m. in 120 Physical Sciences. Presented by Cornell Career Services.

Gluck will discuss how he got his start, the challenges and rewards of working in entertainment and how his liberal arts education has helped him throughout his career. He will also join students at a Carl Becker House dinner following the lecture, and will lead a master class in a screenwriting course for performing and media arts and film majors.

While he was an Asian studies major at Cornell, Gluck started the theater group Upstage Left and was a WVBR disc jockey. After graduation, he found a job as a television production assistant in Hollywood. His company, Olive Bridge Entertainment, produced the new animated series “Moonbeam City” for Comedy Central and is developing two films: “How to Disappear Completely” and “Escape Artists.”

Folk duo

The Cornell Folk Song Society presents the regional debut of K2, the duo of Kate MacLeod and Kat Eggleston, Oct. 16 at 8:15 p.m. in Kaufman Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall.

The duo fuses traditional and original styles including Celtic dance, a cappella, Appalachian ballads, country and contemporary folk with ethereal voices, guitars, fiddle and hammered dulcimer.

Tickets are $17 at the door, $15 in advance (at Ithaca Guitar Works, Autumn Leaves Books, and Greenstar); $5 for Cornell students; children age 12 and under free. There will be a $3 rebate at the door for senior citizens, society members and teenagers. Information, tickets: www.cornellfolksong.org, 607-351-1845.

Money and politics

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group hosts a panel discussion focused on solutions to reclaim democracy from big money in politics, Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 6 p.m. in 253 Malott Hall. The public is invited.

Panelists include Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 and Cornell government professor Elizabeth Sanders and assistant professor Jamila Michener.

Following Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions in recent years, a surge in spending at the local, state and national levels to influence results of the 2012 elections saw wealthy donors and corporations funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into candidates’ campaigns, SuperPACs and “dark money” groups. Indications point to an even greater outpouring of big money in the 2016 presidential race, USPIRG reports.

The panel will discuss the consequences of this unlimited money system, including the concerns of the public being drowned out by the interests of millionaires and billionaires. Potential reforms include a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and small-donor empowerment policies that strengthen the voice and participation of average Americans in our democracy.

The event is co-sponsored by the Cornell Society for Women in Politics, Cornell International Affairs Society, Cornell Political Union, Cornell Democrats, No Labels, Ecology House and ECO, the Cornell Environmental Collaborative (formerly the Sustainability Hub).

Refugee songs

Miriam Isaacs, M.A. ‘70, Ph.D. ’71, will present “Voices from Atlantis: Jewish Songs from Refugees in 1948,” Tuesday, Oct. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in 165 McGraw Hall, accompanied by the Cornell University Klezmer Ensemble. The event is free and open to the public.

Isaacs’ presentation draws from her work with the Ben Stonehill Oral History Collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The audio collection captures a moment when Jewish refugees, some having just come from displacement camps, look back to their old lives while newly ready to engage with life in America.

Stonehill, a lover of Yiddish who was aware of how much cultural heritage had been lost, recorded stories and more than 1,000 songs from Holocaust survivors housed at the Hotel Marseilles in New York City in 1948. Before his death in 1964, he donated the recordings to the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

Isaacs holds advanced Cornell degrees in linguistics and before her retirement was an associate professor of Yiddish language and culture at the University of Maryland, College Park. The event is presented by the Jewish Studies Program and Near Eastern Studies.

Fight pictures

Cornell Cinema hosts visiting filmmaker Marshall Curry at two free screenings in Willard Straight Theatre this week.

“Street Fight,” Oct. 20 at 7:15 p.m., is a 2005 political documentary about the Newark, New Jersey, mayoral race between Cory Booker and veteran incumbent Sharpe James. Curry and Sam Cullman co-directed “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front,” showing Oct. 21 at 7:15 p.m. The 2011 film concerns a group of radical environmentalists responsible for hundreds of arsons against ecologically exploitative corporations.

Curry is the Irik Sevin ’69 West Campus Visiting Fellow; the events are co-sponsored by the Sevin Fellowship and Flora Rose House.

Also at Cornell Cinema: Producer Ryan Silbert '02 presents his 2015 feature executive produced by Spike Lee, “The Girl Is in Trouble,” Oct. 22 at 7 p.m., and will talk about working with the noir genre and storytelling. Other alumni working on the film include producers Rob Profusek ‘03 and Matt Greenbaum ’01 and composer Gregg Lehrman ‘02.

Racial justice

Civic leader Joseph Holland ’78, M.A. ’79, will speak about the enduring dynamic in American history between Christian witness and racial justice, and reviving justice and equality in response to racial bias and violence in Baltimore and other cities, in a public lecture on “Racial Justice, Revival and the Refounding of America,” Oct. 23 at 3:30 p.m. in Alice Statler Auditorium.

Holland’s talk, the Alan T. and Linda M. Beimfohr Lecture, is being held in conjunction with the Trustee-Council Annual Meeting.

Based in Harlem, Holland is a real estate developer, ordained minister, attorney and civic leader. He was an American history major and an All-American football player as a Cornell undergraduate and is a Harvard Law School graduate. He served on the Cornell Board of Trustees for 12 years and is now Trustee Emeritus.

The annual Biemfohr Lecture is sponsored by Chesterton House, a center for Christian studies affiliated with Cornell United Religious Work.

STEM for girls

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) Ithaca Branch will host a conference on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs for girls on Saturday, Oct. 24 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) and Museum of the Earth, 1259 Trumansburg Road (Route 96), Ithaca. Open to the public.

The conference, “From Mud Pies to Dinosaur Bones: Encouraging Girls’ Interest in STEM,” is aimed at a general audience and will showcase various STEM-related programs and activities appropriate for girls at different ages from preschool to high school.

Presenters include Patrice Torcivia Prusko, an instructional designer at Cornell Information Technologies, on massive open online courses for middle and high school girls; Illa Burbank, president of IthacaSTEM Advocates, an affiliate of the Ithaca Public Education Initiative for K-12 students; Empire State STEM Learning Network regional director Sara Silverstone; and PRI/Museum of the Earth Director Warren Allmon, speaking on the life and work of Katherine Palmer, PRI’s second director.

For more information, contact Sarah Johnson at SLJithaca@aol.com.