The final installment of the University of Pittsburgh's Spectacles Film Series is the 2003 Studio Ghibli Film Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) on April 8. Once a month, the Film Studies Program website explains,
Spectacles invites religious studies, cultural studies, and film studies enthusiasts to join together and watch a movie with religious themes. Afterwards, religious studies majors will lead an open discussion about the movie. And of course, there will be movie snacks!
A a 2002 A.V. Club review provides a brief summary:
Spirited Away centers on Chihiro, a sullen, fearful Japanese girl whose parents are moving so far out into the country that they predict they'll have to drive to the next town just to shop. While traveling to their new home, they discover an abandoned, disintegrating theme park, which they cheerfully explore in spite of Chihiro's shrill protests. Suddenly, a boy approaches her and commands her to leave before nightfall. But before she can gather her wayward parents and escape, night does fall, in a breathtakingly eerie sequence that almost subsumes Chihiro's danger with its technical achievement. Chihiro is trapped in the spirit world, and in order to save herself, her parents, and eventually her new friend, she has to come to terms with herself and her unwitting captors. Gradually, in a series of almost episodic adventures, she learns to be brave and face up to her responsibilities to herself and the people she loves.The event starts at 5:00 pm in room 407 of the Cathedral of Learning (map) and is free and open to the public.
