Complex Issues: The Assistant

The Assistant follows one day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner), a recent college graduate and aspiring film producer, who has recently landed her dream job as a junior assistant to a powerful entertainment mogul. Her day is much like any other assistant’s—making coffee, changing the paper in the copy machine, ordering lunch, arranging travel, taking phone messages, onboarding a new hire. But as Jane follows her daily routine, she, and we, grow increasingly aware of the abuse that insidiously colors every aspect of her work day, an accumulation of degradations against which Jane decides to take a stand, only to discover the true depth of the system into which she has entered.
Screening followed by a conversation between Writer-Director Kitty Green, Producers Scott Macaulay and James Schamus, Film, and Denise Cruz, English and Comparative Literature.
Co-presented by the Department of English and Comparative Literature; Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality; and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities.
Complex Issues explores difference, visibility, and representation through recent work by faculty of Columbia University and Columbia University School of the Arts in particular. Conversations invite challenging questions of racial, ethnic, gender, economic, sexual, religious, and cultural complexity, and how they are articulated across discipline and genre today.
Check-in will begin one hour prior to start time. Seating is limited and first come, first served. Advance registration does not guarantee seating; early arrival is suggested.
Event Contact Information:
Gavin Browning
212-853-1607
gdb2106@columbia.edu