“Stonebreakers” Special Screening Event at Newnham College

Award-winning documentary on conflicts over monuments and historical representation in the USA

Thursday, March 14 | 5pm | Newnham College, University of Cambridge (C. Beerbower Room)

Newnham College is pleased to announce the Cambridge premiere of the documentary feature “Stonebreakers” (2022), directed by Valerio Ciriaci. The screening will take place at Newnham College, University of Cambridge on Thursday, March 14 at 5:00 pm (Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DF - Cynthia Beerbower Room), and will be followed by an in-person Q&A with director Valerio Ciriaci, producer/cinematographer Isaak Liptzin, and Saleyha Ahsan, with moderation by Prof. Jenny Mander (biographies below).

“Stonebreakers” chronicles the conflicts around monuments that arose in the United States against the backdrop of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and presidential election. As statues of Columbus, Confederates, and Founding Fathers fall from their pedestals, the country’s triumphalist myths are called into question. Exploring the shifting landscapes of American monumentality, the film interrogates the link between history and political action in a nation that must confront its past now more urgently than ever.

The film was awarded an honorable mention for best documentary and the audience award upon its world premiere at Festival dei Popoli in Florence, and won best documentary at the Workers Unite Film Festival in New York City. The film has been shown internationally at over 100 venues, including leading film festivals, cinemas, and academic institutions.

The screening at Newnham is part of a wider tour with events at the School of Advanced Study in London, University of Bristol, University of Warwick, and at the New Monuments Symposium at the Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris. Find a full list of screenings at awenfilms.net/stonebreakers-screenings.

For all inquiries, please contact Jenny Mander at jsm15@cam.ac.uk or +44 (0) 1223 335807.

Isaak Liptzin and Valerio Ciriaci are co-founders of Awen Films, a production company based in New York specializing in documentaries on historical, cultural, social, and contemporary issues. Founded in 2012, the group produces independent films and commissioned content, operating in an international context, especially between Italy and the United States. Awen Films’ independent documentaries have been awarded at leading international film festivals, received extensive television and digital distribution, and have been presented in numerous cinemas and academic institutions. Awen Films has created short and medium-length content on commission for clients including Al Jazeera, MSNBC, New York University, University of Hawaii, Bologna Business School, Centro Primo Levi, Center for Italian Modern Art, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, and the United Nations. Their independent filmography includes: “If Only I Were That Warrior” (2015), “Iom Romì: A Day in Rome” (2017), “Mister Wonderland” (2019), and “Stonebreakers” (2022).

Jenny Mander is Professor of French Intellectual History and Intercultural Dialogue, Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, and Fellow and Director of Studies at Newnham College. She is a specialist in the literary and cultural history of the eighteenth century, focusing on the movement of people and ideas. Her current work concerns the place of storytelling in the theory and practice of hospitality, connecting historical perspectives and arts-led thinking to 21st-century challenges as framed by the UN SDGs and Global Compact for Migration. To this end, she has, amongst other projects, been interpreting Voltaire’s famous line: ‘il faut cultiver notre jardin’ in partnership with local community projects, working with artists and musicians.

Saleyha Ahsan is an emergency medicine doctor and a current PhD student at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, examining the impact of attacks against healthcare in armed conflict. Saleyha has an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the University of Essex, where she studied in depth the Law of Armed Conflict and conducted her research essays in the area of attacks against healthcare in war. Saleyha is also a former British Army officer, commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps as a non-medical support officer. She deployed to Bosnia with the NATO Stabilisation Force which is where her interest and commitment to the subject of healthcare access in hostilities began. She has worked as a doctor, filmmaker and freelance journalist (BBC, Channel 4, ITN, Guardian, New Statesman, World Report – Chatham House) for 20 years, reporting and working from conflict settings which include Libya, Syria, Palestine, DR Congo, Jordan and Kashmir. She is a trustee for Action on Armed Violence, the Scottish Documentary Institute and Internews Europe. Saleyha was awarded an honorary degree in recognition of her work in global and humanitarian health and health communication from the University of Dundee, her alma mater. She is currently a moderator on the MSF Global Health and Humanitarian Medicine course