The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (132 S. Elm St., Greensboro) will present its inaugural Summer Documentary Film Camp for middleschool students on Tuesday (Aug. 17) and Wednesday (Aug. 18). The camp will be held 9 a.m. to noon both days. Space is limited to 40 students and pre-registration is required — so act now!
Program participants will enjoy a full morning’s worth of storytelling, tours of selected galleries in the museum’s permanent exhibition The Battlegrounds and creating storyboards (just like Hollywood filmmakers do) that depict social change of historical significance. In addition, the students will enjoy exclusive screenings of two documentaries about leading civil rights activists: Rosa Parks, whose refusal to relinquish her seat in the “whites-only” section of a bus in Montgomery, Ala. In 1955 was one of the principal catalysts of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; and Cesar Chavez, the Mexican labor leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers.
Students will also discuss the films and the legacy of both Parks and Chavez, as well as how documentary films can have a direct impact upon change in society. To this day, documentary films and filmmakers (Michael Moore, anybody? Errol Morris?) continue to spur debate and discussion, not only about the topics and subjects their films address, but in the very personal ways in which the filmmakers address them.
The program fee is $20 (includes tours, art supplies and activities). Again, advance registration is required. For more information, call 336.274.9199. For information about other programs, visit the museum’s official website: www.sitinmovement.org.
The Academy Awards are still months away — anybody have any suggestions for any nominations — but already the School of Filmmaking at the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem has come up a winner.
The Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (commonly known as AMPAS) has awarded a $10,000 grant to UNCSA as incentive support toward its film internship program. This marks the fifth consecutive year in which AMPAS has recognized UNCSA. Since 2006, the School of Filmmaking has received a total of $45,000 in support of its internships on professional film projects.
Because of last year’s AMPAS grant, the School of Filmmaking was able to help fund 17 students in internships throughout the country. Many of them worked on feature films.
Others enjoyed internships with Sony Pictures Animation, OTX Film Marketing and Research, Phoenix Pictures, 716 Productions, RULE/ Boston Camera and filmmaker Allan Holzman. UNCSA students worked on such films as Happythankyoumoreplease, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and stars Richard Jenkins, Kate Mara and Josh Radnor, who also wrote and directed the film; the romantic drama The Last Song, starring Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear and based on Nicholas Sparks’ best-seller; the upcoming comedy Lottery Ticket, starring Bow Wow, Ice Cube, Terry Crews, Loretta Devine and Mike Epps; and the upcoming Road to Nowhere, directed by cult filmmaker Monte Hellman, starring Dominique Swain, Cliff De Young and Fabio Testi.
Numerous School of Filmmaking students have also been visiting the set of Columbia Pictures’ big-budget, big-screen version of the popular Hanna-Barbera ’80s animated series The Smurfs, directed by Raja Gosnell and featuring Neil Patrick Harris, as well as the voices of Katy Perry, Jonathan Winters, George Lopez, Jeff Foxworthy, Wolfgang Puck, Hank Azaria and Alan Cumming. The film is being produced by Jordan Kerner, who has been the dean of the School of Filmmaking since 2007. The Smurfs is currently scheduled to be released in August, 2011.
Since being established in 1968, the Academy Foundation has bestowed more than 700 grants totaling more than $6 million in funding. The program is one of many activities of the Foundation, which is the cultural and educational wing of AMPAS and which grants more than $1 million annually to film scholars, cultural organizations and film festivals around the world.
For more information about the AMPAS grants program, see www.oscars.org/educationoutreach/grants/filmscholars/index.html For more information about all the goingson at UNCSA, visit the official website: www.uncsa.edu.
