Castles in the Sky: Film Screening, Poetry Reading, and Conversation about Cross-Cultural Art Making

Featuring:
Pearl Gluck (filmmaker and associate professor, Penn State)
Julia Spicher Kasdorf (poet and professor, Penn State)
Shara McCallum (poet and professor, Penn State)
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (poet, writer, and translator of Yiddish literature)

Directed by Pearl Gluck in 2022, Castles in the Sky, a 30-minute fictional film depicts Malke, a Holocaust survivor and beloved sex-ed teacher living in a cloistered Hasidic community in Brooklyn. Malke has a secret life slamming poetry in New York’s Lower East Side, defying all communal norms and laws until her transgressive pursuits are discovered by one of her bridal students.

The film screening will be followed by a conversation with director Pearl Gluck and poets Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, and Shara McCallum to discuss the pleasures and power of border crossings and inter-cultural communication for artists who come from minoritized ethno-religious and cultural communities.