|
Hours: 7 pm
Admission: Free
Description: Race, History and Being a Kansas Filmmaker - Kevin Willmott
Kevin Willmott, associate professor of film and media studies at the University of Kansas, will share his life and work at two separate events at Johnson County Community College.
His first presentation, sponsored by the Kansas Studies Institute, is "Race, History and Being a Kansas Filmmaker" at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 26, in Hudson Auditorium at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art on campus. A reception in the atrium is at 6:30, and the public is invited to attend.
Willmott grew up in Junction City, Kan., and he wrote, produced and co-directed "Ninth Street," a film that examined "Junk City's" seedy downtown during the Vietnam War era. "Ninth Street" starred well-known actors Martin Sheen and Isaac Hayes, but that wasn't Wilmott's first brush with Hollywood.
As a screenwriter, Willmott co-wrote screenplays bought by Hollywood's Chris Columbus and Oliver Stone and by executives at CBS and NBC. His own film, "CSA: Confederate States of America," answered the question of what the United States would have been like had the South won the Civil War.
OCTOBER 10, 2012:
In his second appearance, he'll show his film "From Separate to Equal: The Creation of Truman Medical Center" at 11 a.m. Oct. 10, also in Hudson Auditorium. The public is encouraged to attend this event as well.
The movie will serve as a cinematic introduction to the book chosen as JCCC's Common Read for 2012-13: "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot.
Henrietta Lacks, a black woman from Virginia, died of cervical cancer in 1951, and her cells - taken without her knowledge or the consent of her family - were used in medical research. The book details the little-known Lacks and shares the effects of this medical research on Lacks' family.
Both the film and the book examine how the health care establishment treated the black population of the U.S. in the 20th century.
|
