Metropolis (1927)

Join us for more classic films followed by compelling converstaions this spring at the Sheen Center, all pay what you wish!

• March 9, 2026  Nosferatu 
• March 23, 2026 Little Women 

About Horizons of Hope:

In 1995, Pope John Paul II released the Vatican Film List- a list of forty-five films significant to the Catholic faith.  Among them were the German Expressionist SciFi film, Metropolis (1927); the 1933 classic film adaption of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, an early talkie whose cast includes a young Katharine Hepburn; and the 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, Nosferatu.  What do these films have to do with our Faith? Join us and moderator Dr. Matthew Clemente, Director of Research and Curriculum at the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College,  for a film festival celebrating art and spirituality with three classic films, three compelling post-show conversations, and of course, a lot of popcorn. 

Dr. Matthew Clemente is the Director of Research & Curriculum at Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics and an Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Formative Education at Boston College. He is the Coeditor in Chief of the Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion and the Codirector of The Guestbook Project, a 501c3 non-profit. He is the Series Editor of two book series with Routledge/Taylor & Francis and has authored or edited over a dozen books.

David Gibson was appointed the director of the CRC in July 2017, coming to New York’s Jesuit university after a long career as an award-winning religion journalist, author, and filmmaker. He is also a convert to Catholicism and he came by all those vocations by accident--or Providence--while working at the English Program at Vatican Radio in Rome in the late 1980s. He returned to the United States in 1990 and worked for newspapers throughout the New York area and has written for a variety of magazines and periodicals.

Gibson is the author of two books on Catholicism: The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism and The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World. He co-wrote and co-produced several documentaries on Christianity for CNN and the History Channel and co-authored a book on biblical archeology, Finding Jesus: Faith. Fact. Forgery, the basis of a popular CNN series of the same name.

Before coming to Fordham, Gibson worked for six years as a national reporter at Religion News Service and specialized in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. Gibson is a frequent media commentator and op-ed writer on topics related to the Catholic Church and religion in America.

Dr. Shonni Enelow is a Professor and Chair of the English Department at Fordham University.

Dr. Enelow is a critic and scholar who writes about theater and film. She is the author of Joanna Hogg (Contemporary Film Directors series, University of Illinois Press, 2024) and Method Acting and Its Discontents (Northwestern University Press, 2015), which won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Her book with David Levine, A Discourse on Method, was published by 53rd State Press in 2020, and her book with Una Chaudhuri, Research Theatre, Climate Change, and the Ecocide Project, was published by Palgrave in 2014. Her theater scholarship has appeared in Modern Drama, Theater Survey, Theatre Topics, and Theater; her article “Sweating Tennessee Williams” won the Modern Drama Prize in 2019. She writes about film for Reverse Shot, Film Comment, and Criterion, among other venues.