Strip Searches, the Body Politic and the Price of Post-9/11 Security
Featuring Sidney Lumet and Tom Fontana
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
7:30 pm reception with the artists, 8 pm start of program
The Screening Room, 1 Time Warner Center, 10th Fl., 58th St., Columbus Circle, NY
Free and open to the public
Contacts:
Thane Rosenbaum
trosenbaum@law.fordham.edu
Peter Pochna – Rubenstein Associates
ppochna@rubenstein.com
Few filmmakers have had more success exploring the nexus of law and society than legendary film director Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, The Verdict, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico and the upcoming Find Me Guilty) and Emmy award-winning television producer and writer Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide: Life on the Street). Recently they collaborated on an HBO movie, Strip Search, which depicts the moral and legal tensions between security and freedom in a post-9/11 world.
The evening will unfold as a conversation with Lumet and Fontana addressing how and why the legal system has been the subject of so much of their creative work over the years, and the moral statement they have sought to convey by transforming fundamental notions of justice and injustice into art. The evening will include clips from Strip Search, which appeared on HBO last year, and will be moderated by novelist and law professor Thane Rosenbaum, who is the director of the public Forum on Law, Culture and Society. Audience members will be given an opportunity to ask questions of the artists.
The event is the second in the ongoing and innovative Forum on Law, Culture and Society series. It follows an evening in January in which E.L. Doctorow and Tony Kushner discussed the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and its influence on the artistic imagination. The goal of the series is to provide a place where diverse and curious minds can gather and explore questions about the moral mysteries and uncertainties of the law.
Founded in 1905, Fordham Law School is nationally recognized for combining dynamic scholarship and teaching with pragmatic clinical education, moot court, and top journal experience to provide one of the best training grounds for exceptional lawyers. Located in Lincoln Center, the gateway to Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the Law School attracts talent from around the world, inspiring both a faculty that is ranked in the top 20 in terms of publications in the leading law journals and a student body whose academic qualifications rank 15th in American legal education.
