Clark Art Screens 'The French Connection'

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — As part of its free David-Jeremiah film series this fall, the Clark Art Institute screens The "French Connection" (1971) at 6 pm on Oct. 24 in the Manton Research Center auditorium.
 
According to a press release:
 
Director William Friedkin's documentary-style account of a 1961 smashup of an international heroin-trafficking ring by two New York cops—played by two then-little-known actors, Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider—is a real-time thriller about staking out criminals, the bureaucracy of crime-fighting, class differences, and the ugliness of bigotry (especially when it wears a plain-clothes uniform). But it's also about the thrill of the chase. The French Connection won Oscars for Best Picture and Director. (Run time: 1 hour, 44 minutes)
 
Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. 

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
 
Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.
 
"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.
 
"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."
 
Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
 
The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.
 
"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.
 
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