Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

PCC’s Cascade Campus hosts free sneak preview of ‘Gandhi’s Gift’

Photos and story by James Hill

Portland Community College is celebrating International Education Week with a free preview of the new film, “Gandhi’s Gift.”

The film, which is open to the public, will be screened from 7-9 p.m., Monday, Nov. 14 in the Moriarty Arts & Humanities Building Auditorium, Cascade Campus (705 N. Killingsworth St.). In addition, it will be live-streamed to other PCC campuses: Room 100, ST Building, Sylvania Campus (12000 S.W. 49th Ave.) and Room 111, Building 2, Rock Creek Campus (17705 N.W. Springville Road).

“Gandhi’s Gift” is the first major documentary about Mahatma Gandhi to be made in the U.S. and asks the question, “Were Gandhi’s final years his finest?” Co-producer Cynthia Lukas and PCC Board member Michael Sonnleitner, who was a 2009 Fulbright scholar in India, will offer their thoughts and answer questions from the audience about Lukas’ journey to make the movie on the beloved political figure. Sonnleitner served as a consultant on the project.

Attendees will be some of the first to preview the film before it is released. American Public Television on PBS will broadcast it in 2017.

The project was filmed on location in India, South Africa and the United Kingdom, all important locations in Gandhi’s life. “Gandhi’s Gift” is the 15th independent film from Kell Kearns, its director and co-producer. Kearns’ other work includes acclaimed PBS biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. (“In Remembrance of Martin,” 1987) and the great Sufi poet (“Rumi Returning,” 2007). He and Lukas were fortunate enough to have interviewed witnesses who grew up during Gandhi’s time.

“Gandhi’s final years are especially inspiring because he showed our world a way out of the descending spiral of violence and hatred,” Kearns said.

PCC’s Asian Studies and the Internationalization steering committees are sponsors of this event.

For more information, visit www.gandhisgift.org