GSU Film Festival to showcase student work

Georgia State's 3rd annual Film Festival will kick off at 5 p.m. April 25 at the Cinefest Film Theatre.

The three day festival will feature nearly 90 films from students enrolled in narrative, documentary, experimental and new media courses in the Department of Communication during the 2010-11 academic year.

The April 25-26 screenings will start at 5 p.m. and are free and open to the public.

"There's such a diverse population of students at GSU, in terms of ethnicity, culture and taste. The films are not only very eclectic in terms of experimental, documentary, narrative and new media, but the voices are also very unique and distinct," said Daniel Robin, an assistant professor of film and video and the festival creator.

This year's festival judges are Robin and other film faculty members Alessandra Raengo, Jennifer Barker and Jim Roberts.

Among the jury award categories are best experimental film, best documentary, best narrative and best new media.

For the first time, films of the jury selected finalists will be screened off campus at 7 p.m. April 28 the Plaza Theater, located at 1049 Ponce De Leon Ave. The event is free for GSU students with Student ID. All other attendees can purchase tickets at the door for $3.

"This event has grown over the last three years and I wanted to open up what we are doing with our film students at GSU to the Atlanta film going community," Robin said. "I also want the students to get a taste of what it's like to get their films shown off campus."

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Crim Center hosts event to commemorate 50th anniversary of Freedom Rides

In 1961, hundreds of black and white Americans traveled together on buses and trains from Washington, D.C. to several major southern cities, testing the end of Jim Crow laws in public transportation and demonstrating that they were willing to fight the injustices of segregation.

Fifty years later, the message this mass transit movement made still resonates and will be commemorated this month at “The Power of Students: Freedom Riders,” an event hosted by the College of Education’s Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence.

At this event, scheduled for 5 p.m. March 17 in the Georgia State University Speakers Auditorium, attendees will be able to see an advanced screening of the Public Broadcasting Service’s film entitled, “Freedom Riders,” which highlights the history of the Freedom Rides through the eyes of those who participated and the government officials and journalists who witnessed it firsthand.

“This student-planned event was developed out of a deep desire to showcase the collective power of students, unity through diversity, and success in the face of adversity,” said Bryan Murray, business affairs coordinator for the Crim Center. “In the 1960s, young college students took the initiative to become catalysts for national change. It is not only an awe-inspiring feat, but serves as an inspiration for students of all ages that they are capable of achieving and affecting change at any level.”

Following the film, Atlanta Journal-Constitution assignments editor Angela Tuck will moderate a discussion about the rides and the film with two Freedom Riders: Bernard Lafayette and William Harbour. Lafayette, who hails from Tampa, Fla., was part of the Nashville Student Movement Ride on May 17, 1961 and was arrested in Birmingham for his participation. Following the Freedom Rides, he worked on voting rights and serves as a Distinguished Senior Scholar-in-Residence at Emory University. Harbour, a native of Piedmont, Ala., was one of 14 Freedom Riders expelled from Tennessee State University. He later became a teacher and then worked as a civilian federal employee specializing in U.S. Army base closings, according to the film’s website.

This event, which was planned by GSU students Danyelle Thomas and Tierra Benton, is designed to show that students can make a difference even when facing seemingly insurmountable odds.

“College students, just like me, risked their education and lives to evoke change,” Thomas said. “To have an opportunity to listen to key activists like Bernard Lafayette and William Harbour tell these stories in their voice and perspective really brings things to life. It is my hope that this event awakens a spirit of activism in each of us and helps us recognize that it only takes one choice and one action to bring about incredible change.”

This event is free and open to the public.

By Claire Miller

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Spivey Hall Hosts Clayton State Faculty Showcase, September 30

A remarkable collection of artistic talent, drawn from the Clayton State University Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) Department, will be on stage at Spivey Hall on Thursday, Sept. 30, as part of the celebration of the inauguration of Dr. Thomas J. “Tim” Hynes, Jr., as the University’s fourth president.

Starting at 11:30 a.m., and running to approximately 12:30 p.m., the VPA Faculty Showcase is free and open to the public and will feature the musical, dramatic and artistic talents of nationally-known artists like Clayton State Theatre Director Phillip DePoy, Director of Keyboard Studies Dr. Michiko Otaki, Director of Opera and Vocal Studies Dr. Kurt-Alexander Zeller, and Assistant Professor of Studio Art Alan Xie.

A unit of the University System of Georgia, Clayton State University is an outstanding comprehensive metropolitan university located 15 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta.

GSU educator’s photos show other side of Civil Rights Movement

Demonstrations, protests and sit-ins are images that typically come to mind when one thinks of the Civil Rights Movement.

But Doris Derby, director of African-American Student Services and Programs at Georgia State, shows other aspects of this turbulent time in our nation’s history through her photography in a new exhibit.

As an active member of the movement during the 1960s, Derby captured African-Americans working to reform health care, equalize the educational system, spark economic development and revitalize the art world.

Nearly 100 of her photographs will be on display over the next three months at the Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta in an exhibit titled, “Photo Griots: Doris Derby and Sue Ross.”
The exhibit will run through Sept. 13 at the museum, located at 503 Peoples St. in Atlanta.

“A lot of my photographs depict self-help activities,” Derby said. “African-Americans in the Civil Rights movement often lost their jobs when they registered to vote, so they started co-ops of several types. This is just one example of the grass root activities that established the foundation for what we take for granted today.”

Derby’s work also shines a light on African-American women during the civil rights movement, including everyday women and notable leaders such as Charlayne Hunter-Gault who integrated the University of Georgia, author Alice Walker and Dorothy Height, president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women.

Derby and co-exhibitor, Susan Ross, are members of Sistagraphy, an Atlanta-based collective of African-American women photographers.

The title of the exhibit, “Photo Griots,” comes from the African tradition of oral history and now relates to photographic history. Both women hope to tell the story of the African American community through their photographs. Derby chronicles 1960-1970 and Ross covers the 1980s, 1990s and today.

"I am primarily a people photographer, finding grace and dignity in the faces of our people," said Ross who is a photographer for the City of Atlanta mayor’s office and photographs National Black Art Council events.

Derby has previously exhibited her work at Georgia State as well as other venues. Her photos were included in the “Road to Freedom” exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta last spring and at several museums throughout the United States, including the Smithsonian.

Last summer, Derby also had an exhibit at Georgia State titled “Disappearing Black Neighborhoods” with images capturing the everyday life of those growing up in the segregated South of the 1960s.

“I was always interested in the depiction of African-American people in positive light, in full light,” Derby said. “This has been one of the things that I’ve done all my life, getting images of African-American people out for other people to see.”

The Department of African-American Student Services and Programs is in the Division of Student Affairs at Georgia State.

For more information on her current exhibit, visit: http://hammondshouse.org/exhibitions.html

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Rialto plays host to renowned Italian Film Festival

Italian Film Festival in Atlanta
Films will be screened at 8 p.m. April 28 through May 1
Rialto Center for the Arts, 80 Forsyth St. N.W., Atlanta

The Rialto Center for the Arts will host this year’s Italian Film Festival in Atlanta, an offshoot of Miami’s hugely successful annual festival, April 28 through May 1.

This marks the third year the festival will be in Atlanta, and the first year it will be held at Georgia State University.

“I thought it would be a very good match with the university’s mission,” said Richard Keatley, a lecturer in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at GSU. “This year, it’s free and open to the public. We want this to be a festival for Atlanta and not just for Georgia State.”

The four films to be screened will all be projected in 35 mm, and audiences will get to vote for the winner of the festival. One of the films to be screened, “I Vicere (The Viceroys),” won the top prize at last year’s Miami festival.

“They’re all films that have had critical success in Italy as well,” Keatley said. “They’re all new Italian films, so they’re films you can’t see on DVD from Netflix.”

The festival will also screen dramas “Parlami d’Amore (Talk to Me About Love)” and “Prendimi l’Anima (The Soul Keeper),” as well as comedy “Notte Prima Degli Esami, Oggi (Night Before the Exams, Today).”

“It’s appropriate to the context here at Georgia State because students are taking their exams,” said Keatley. “It’s a film I think the students will like, a fun film to let them relax during exam week.”

In the coming years, Keatley said he hopes to grow the Atlanta incarnation of the Italian Film Festival and eventually include visits from Italian actors and directors and a short film competition for students.

“Miami started a lot like this,” he said. “This is a chance for a venue every year to bring the best of Italian cinema to Atlanta in a way that’s very accessible.”

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Arts Event Transforms Historic Castleberry Hill Neighborhood October 24

“Le Flash,” a night of art, light and sound
Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill district and Cleopas Park
7 p.m. to midnight Oct. 24

For one night, Georgia State artists will transform the streets of Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill district as part of “Le Flash,” an event coordinated by Welch School of Art and Design gallery director Cathy Byrd and local artist Stuart Keeler.

Performances and shows from percussionists, poets, filmmakers and fashion designers are among the more than 30 projects that will be featured as part of “Le Flash.” Highlights include an iron pour and the unveiling of a temporary fountain in Cleopas Park created by Paris-based artist Kristina Solomoukha.

“Stuart Keeler and I invented ‘Le Flash’ as a way to animate the neighborhood and synergize the relationship with the park,” Byrd said. “It’s a community project, and so many of Georgia State University’s staff, students and faculty members have become involved in making this happen.”

Byrd said she hopes that Solomoukha’s exhibit will help bring more Castleberry Hill residents to Cleopas Park, as it is currently an underused cultural space. “Le Flash” will be happening in collaboration with Castleberry Hill’s Fourth Friday Art Stroll, linking the historic district’s monthly event to the park.

“The energy’s there, the excitement’s there, and the community is waiting to share it,” Byrd said.

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Georgia State Students’ Film to Premiere at Olympics

For most, going to the Olympics as a spectator is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For three Georgia State graduate students — Phoebe Brown, Shanna Gildersleeve and Micah Stansell — and their faculty adviser, Niklas Vollmer, attending this summer’s games in Beijing will offer another unique experience: the world premiere of their documentary film.

The Coca-Cola Co. commissioned Vollmer and his students to film a segment on Doug Stoup, an environmentalist and expeditionist who has led teams to the North and South poles and was selected as a torchbearer for this year’s Olympics. Teams of students from Australia, China, Pakistan, Russia, Tanzania and Turkey also filmed their own segments. After seeing the work from Georgia State, Coca-Cola asked Vollmer, Brown, Gildersleeve and Stansell to edit each five-minute segment into one film.

“Hopefully at some point, we’ll at least make some kind of personal contact with the other students,” Brown says. “We’ve spent a lot more time with their work. As you keep watching, you start feeling like you get a sense of what the people who made it would be like.”

The film blends the different filmmakers’ unique storytelling styles to illustrate the need for global awareness of environmental issues ranging from water pollution to melting glaciers to wildlife conservation. Each segment follows an environmentalist who was selected as an Olympic torchbearer and highlights his or her cause.

“Hopefully, it will effect some sort of change,” Stansell says.

Vollmer says it’s been rewarding to guide his students through the process of putting together the film, calling it a bridge between Georgia State and other universities.

“These three have been great at adapting to something that all of us, when we first agreed to it, had no idea what it really would turn out to be,” he says. “I wanted a sharp crew, and they’re sharp.”

The film will premiere Aug. 13 at the Coca-Cola Shuang Experience Center, a hospitality venue on the Olympic Green.

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Georgia State Educator’s Photos Exhibited at High Museum

At the height of the civil rights movement, photographic images of the struggle for equality alerted the nation to injustices waged against African-Americans. Years later, these images are still part of our collective memory.

Doris Derby, director of African-American Student Services and Programs at Georgia State, is one of nearly 50 photographers whose work is included in “Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968,” an exhibit on display through Oct. 5 at the High Museum of Art. The exhibit features approximately 200 photographs that helped shape public opinion on the civil rights movement.

“A lot of people were immune to what was going on,” Derby said. “A lot of people had blinders on. It had been tradition, the way things were, and so the photographs really acted to vividly depict the struggle for equality, the individual acts of the struggle, and the reaction of the segregationists who did not want to change the status quo.”

Derby, who began documenting her subjects through painting, drawing and photography as a child, has previously exhibited her work at Georgia State as well as other venues.

“I was doing what had always been one of my goals – to see African-Americans make headway in the arts, in education and employment, and they all tied together in photographs,” she said of her work.

“Road to Freedom,” which also includes a collection of historical documents, will travel throughout the U.S. after it leaves the High. Derby is also preparing for an upcoming exhibit at Georgia State titled “Disappearing Black Neighborhoods.” These images capture the everyday life of those growing up in the segregated South of the 1960s.

“I was always interested in the depiction of African-American people in positive light, in full light,” Derby said. “This has been one of the things that I’ve done all my life, getting images of African-American people out for other people to see.”