SPH Hosts Annual Film Festival

Sex education, oil dependence, and global health are some of the topics to be featured in the School of Public Health's fourth annual film festival.

This year's event promises to be educational, entertaining, and thought provoking. Hosted in conjunction with National Public Health Week, the festival begins on Monday, April 7 and concludes on Friday, April 11.

The week's events begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Mayo Memorial Auditorium on the East Bank of the University's Twin Cities campus. One of the films to be shown is ¡Salud!, which examines how the cash-strapped country of Cuba has what some experts refer to as one of the world's best health systems.

Also to be screened are two segments of Unnatural Causes, a new PBS documentary that examines America's socioeconomic and racial inequities in health. The documentary A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash tells the story of how our civilization's addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology.

Festival organizers are proud to showcase SPH alumnus Jim Winkle's (M.P.H. '07) documentary Sex Ed and the State, a look at Minnesota's state legislature and the fate of a comprehensive sexuality education bill.

Winners of the school's second annual "It's Global" Public Service Announcement (PSA) contest will be screened the first night of the festival. The contest invites filmmakers to create a 30-second PSA focused on a global health topic. The film festival is free and open to the public.

For more information, including a full listing of film descriptions, screening times, and directions to the theater, visit www.sph.umn.edu/filmfest08. City Pages is the exclusive media sponsor of the film festival.