If American Reunion, Clash of the Titans or John Carter aren’t striking your fancy, the upcoming Filmfest DC—the Washington, DC International Film Festival—is the perfect way to restore your faith in cinema. Beginning tomorrow, the 26th Annual Filmfest runs through April 22nd at various locations, including E Street Cinema and Gallery Place. Be sure to check the festival’s website for all ticketing, location, and schedule information.

This year’s festival is based on three themes: The Lighter Side, comprised of hilarious comedies full of both cultural relevance and smiles; Caribbean Journeys, films of tropic wonder, seeking to explain, identify, and understand the complex societies of the the Caribbean islands; and Justice Matters, which features some of the highest ranked documentaries from the past year on social justice.

In addition to the film screenings, a filmmakers’ panel will be held on Saturday at Busboys & Poets (the one at 5th and K) at 10 a.m. The panel will feature local filmmakers who have pieces in the festival this year, and they will be discussing their own connection to the subject matter of their films. This panel is free, but Busboys & Poets is a popular place to grab brunch and discuss the revolución, so get there early.

The festival kicks off tomorrow night with Starbuck, a Canadian comedy about a sperm donor who finds how he has indirectly fathered over 500 children, and finishes on Sunday, April 22nd, with The Intouchables, which is billed as the “second most successful French film of all time.” In between the opener and closer is a slew of other films conscientious of social justice, slathered in whimsy, or documenting the rich historical construct that is the Caribbean. If you’ve got an interest in cinema, if you’re big on affecting the world in a positive, or you just want a good laugh, be sure to check out the District’s film festival!

As the Hilltop enjoys the transition from winter to spring, Will Eno’s The Flu Season arrives in the Walsh Black Box at a fitting time. Nomadic Theatre’s Robert Duffley (COL ’13) directs The Flu Season, with Diane Giangreco (COL ’13) producing. Having opened last night, the production runs through Saturday in Walsh.

The play opens with the disconcerting proposition that it does not have to happen, and closes with the assertion that it did not. The Flu Season revolves around the construction and deconstruction of writing, the scenes with both the human manifestation of Prologue, played by Allie Villarreal (COL ’12), and Epilogue, played by Amelia Powell (COL ’12). The two serve as commentators for a story that plays out in a “hospital of sorts,” with Villarreal preparing the audience with her fierce yet gullible meanderings, and Powell often repeating her opposite’s lines with a sincere sense of what is to come.

The play’s fixation on dualities is emphasized by the mechanics of the stage, which is split in half for the majority of the action. The “hospital of sorts,” is occupied by a cast of crazies. Danny Sullivan (MSB ’14), delicately interprets his character, Man, to be manic, and Woman, played by Lily Kaiser (COL ’12), suggests a deep sense of depression. Both successfully present themselves with a heavy dose of confusion, a magnified reflection of the intricate web that is playwriting.

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Last night, Georgetown’s Knights of Columbus held a symposium on “Religious Freedom and Healthcare.” The program included a set of conservative religious, political, and legal figures discussing the Obama administration’s recent decisions on the religious conscience exception to the requirement mandating contraception be included in health insurance policies, the intentions behind it, and the proper Catholic response to it.

The symposium’s cast included Timothy Shah of the Berkley Center’s Religious Freedom Project as the moderator of the discussion; Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian as well as the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.; Kellie Fiedorek, Staff Counsel for Americans United for Life; Thomas Peters, the prominent blogger of American Papist run through CatholicVoteAction.org, laid out the steps by which President Barack Obama “exploited” his power to pass the insurance mandate that would “force women to receive access to life-ending drugs”; and Scott Lloyd, Assistant Director of Public Policy for the Knights of Columbus, went over some of the legal details of the mandate.

Starting the night off with the Lord’s Prayer, the panel was observed by a group of roughly 25 people, including the Knights. Shah opened the discussion up for each member to speak briefly so that there would be time for questions and comments at the end. Peters, the American Papist, held nothing back in his criticism of the administration’s decisions:

Before we decide where to go from here, we must first stop to analyze what the Left did to get us here. The Obama administration has exploited it’s power, ignoring the constitution, by way of eight relatively easy steps. First, it has the power. Obamacare provided the federal government with power over the health insurance industry. Second, the power of the HHS mandate allowed Senator Mikulski to make sure insurance plans cover abortion drugs. Third, Obama brought in the experts. Not one of the sixteen members on the deciding committee was pro-life. Fourth, they ignored the media’s response. It was a sham. Fifth, the HHS was an edict and held no care for dissent. Sixth, the administration waited for backlash and gave a phony compromise in response. Seventh, they manipulated the media and claimed the religious right was leading a ‘war on contraception.’ Eighth, and perhaps most disappointingly, Obama exploited the Catholic supporters of the mandate and used them to his advantage.

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Just in time for a month of heated GUSA campaigning and the sometimes subjective media coverage that accompanies it, TIME Magazine Managing Editor Rick Stengel spoke to Georgetown’s chief political organizations on Thursday night. Brought by the Georgetown Lecture Fund, and co-hosted by College Democrats and College Republicans, Stengel dealt with the heated topics of bias and subjectivity in the media, freedom of information, the concepts of “right” and “wrong,” the need for transparency, and how all of this relates to the world’s major news outlets.

Stengel initiated in the part-lecture, part-discussion with the decree that he should not be quoted, that “all of the following is to go off the record,” and that those hoping to relay the words to subsequently come out of his mouth should definitely check with him first. This dictatorial opening with a partially humorous motif was met with the nervous giggle of some of the audience. To a filled auditorium in Reiss, Stengel began to riff about his often unexpected beliefs on the absence of objectivity, the importance of the tablet age to news sources, and the lack of funds to political campaigns.

“Newspapers and magazines can try to be be objective, but they’ll only end up pretending to do so,” he proclaimed. “The best path a journalist can take is getting all of his or her information straight, and to leave that unbiased. To tie it all together, he or she should give their opinion on the matter. Transparency is the best option.”

Stengel spoke on his work throughout the years with political campaigns, how the news-to-tablet phenomena spawned a rather close relationship with the recently deceased Apple CEO Steve Jobs, his work with The New Yorker, which he described as a magazine that “appeals to a certain set of people,” and deals with issues “that are not necessarily current, but definitely important, and highly conceptual.” Perhaps most shockingly in the lecture, Stengel confessed that political campaigns do not get enough funding, at least relatively.

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This week, the Spagnuolo Gallery (located in the Walsh building) opened a new exhibition, “Where the Seafloor Melts,” in which both the ancient and serene are realized by both science and accuracy. The exhibit is constituted of stoneware by the artist Joan Lederman, who, residing in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, incorporated the local influence of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and their deep-sea finds into her artwork through the use of glazes composed of Neptunian muds.

The exhibit opens to the eye as a set of gorgeous plates and vases in both earthen and aquatic colors. The pieces make use of both of shape, pattern, and color: these conventions expressing themselves by way of the kiln.

Coordinates, materials, historical periods and motives are all arranged into the various pieces in the gallery, by way of glaze painted into words around the circular forms. In the heavily earth-toned vase entitled “Amaphora: Mud Pun,” the ancient date (750 B.C.) of a Phoenician shipwreck, from which she incorporated mud, is listed around the neck. Pieces such as this are the first to incorporate ancient, oceanic sands into the glazing process.

Another work that incorporates the location from which the mud came into the art itself is “Mud Blood,” a piece which, encircled by a faint green, is reminiscent of tenth-century Korean celadon, though upon further inspection, found its origin in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, specifically the coordinates 23°5‘ North, 45° West. The viewer is also informed that the mud was retrieved from a fracture site for drilling.

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