Provided

Cornell Cinema hosts a Halloween party Oct. 31 in Willard Straight Theatre, with a screening of the vampire comedy "What We Do in the Shadows."

Twilight Concert

The Cornell University Chorus holds its annual Twilight Concert, a First-Year Parents’ Weekend tradition, Saturday, Oct. 31, at 5 p.m. in Bailey Hall, with music in many languages from the 16th century to the present day.Tickets are $10 general; $8 for students.

The concert, "Transformations," features the world premiere of "Malala," commissioned from composer Adrienne Albert and based on speeches by young activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai; "Martes," Joseph Gregorio '01's setting of a Spanish proverb about the bad luck of Tuesdays; "Libera Nos, Salva Nos," a chant with six interweaving polyphonic parts sung by the Cornell University Glee Club; and a closing set of Cornell songs.

The Chorus, founded in 1921, is making its first Twilight Concert appearance in Bailey Hall. The group will tour Mexico and Guatemala this winter with the Glee Club; proceeds from the concert will support the trip. 

'Shadows' and jobs

A Halloween party at Cornell Cinema – with candy, a pair of fangs, free popcorn and photo ops for attendees in scary costume to be shown on the big screen – accompanies a screening of "What We Do in the Shadows," Oct. 31 at 7 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Admission is $5. Presented by the Cornell Cinema Student Advisory Board.

The 2015 New Zealand mockumentary, showing at 7:30 p.m., was written and co-directed by Taiki Watiti and "Flight of the Conchords" actor Jemaine Clement, who co-star as vampires trying to adapt to 21st-century life.

Cornell Cinema also shows a new animated version of "Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet,'" Nov. 5-8, with Salma Hayek and Liam Neeson; and a free screening of "The Hand That Feeds," Nov. 5 at 7 p.m., presented by the ILR School in celebration of its 70th anniversary.

Introduced by professor Jefferson Cowie and assistant professor Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, the documentary follows a 2012 labor dispute involving undocumented workers at a New York City deli, who prevail by forming an independent union with help from labor organizers and Occupy Wall Street activists.

Folk-rock duo

Upstate New York folk-rock duo Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers and Wendy Ramsay perform on campus for WVBR's "Bound for Glory" Nov. 1 from 8 to 11 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Café. Admission is free and open to all ages.

Rodgers is a versatile guitarist, founding editor of Acoustic Guitarmagazine and a John Lennon Songwriting Contest grand prizewinner. Ramsay adds harmonies, flute, clarinet, guitar, accordion and her quirky original songs to the mix.

The Sunday night live folk concerts are broadcast on WVBR-FM 93.5.

'Memory and Genocide'

Author and editor Philip Gourevitch ’83 gives a keynote speech on "Memory and Genocide," Nov. 3 at 5:30 p.m. in Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. A reception will follow in A.D. White House. Free and open to the public, the event is presented by the Jewish Studies Program and Cornell University Library and launches Cornell's access to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archives, a resource gathering some 53,000 individual testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and genocides in Rwanda, Armenia and elsewhere.

A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1997, Gourevitch succeeded George Plimpton in 2005 as editor of The Paris Review. He is the author of "The Ballad of Abu Ghraib" (2008) and "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" (1998), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The launch will include remarks by President Elizabeth Garrett; Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences; and Trustee Emeritus Robert Katz '69, a former board chair of the USC Shoah Archives who helped bring access to the archive to Cornell.

'Chats' on global issues

Cornell University Library's Chats in the Stacks series, which promotes new and notable books by faculty authors, will feature two presentations this week.

Assistant professor of Southeast Asian studies Chiara Formichi’s "Shi'ism in South East Asia," out in November, is the first book available in any language to critically address A'lid piety and its modern contestations in the region. Formichi will discuss her research on ethics, politics, traditions of piety and contemporary sectarian tensions in the Muslim world, Nov. 4 at 4:30 p.m. in 107 Olin Library.

Applied economics and management professor Harry de Gorter describes some of the causes of major global food crises in 2007-08 and 2010-11 in a discussion of his book "The Economics of Biofuel Policies," Nov. 5 at 4 p.m. in 160 Mann Library.

The book talks are free and open to the public, with free refreshments and books available for purchase and signing.

Dance the night away

More than 500 Cornellians plan to pull an all-nighter Nov. 7 in Barton Hall to raise funds for a children's hospital with a dance marathon, Big Red Thon.

Sponsored by Phi Mu and the pre-med fraternity Phi Delta Epsilon, the event is open to all ages and runs for 13.1 hours, from 7 p.m. Saturday to 8:06 a.m. Sunday. The $10 registration fee includes a shirt for each participant and food throughout the event. Participants are asked to raise $50 to $100 each toward a $50,000 goal.

The continuous dancing will include themed hours for hip-hop, Zumba and rave. Dancers are allowed to take a break; the marathon also features carnival games, Cornell dance and a cappella group performances and other activities.

Donations from the marathon will support the expansion of the pediatric emergency department at Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital in Syracuse, which serves children from upstate New York, Vermont and Pennsylvania.

Portraits of survivors

"More Than a Survivor: More Than a Story," an exhibit Nov. 2-20 in the Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery, seeks to generate awareness of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic sex trafficking of girls and young women. It features a series of portraits of 22 women from across the country who defy stereotypes of commercially exploited and trafficked victims as broken and limited by trauma.

S.A.S.S.Y. (Students Against the Sexual Solicitation of Youth), a program of the Cornell Public Service Center, is hosting the exhibition, which was created by the GEMS’ (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) Survivor Leadership Institute and Resource Center in New York City.

The exhibition is co-sponsored and funded by the Cornell Women's Resource Center, Student Assembly Finance Board and the Community Partnership Funding Board.