ALBANY, NY (08/25/2010)(readMedia)-- The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany announces its Fall 2010 schedule of visiting writer appearances and film series screenings. Events take place on the UAlbany uptown and downtown campuses and are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).

The Institute's focus this fall is on diversity, made possible in part from a special grant received from the State University of New York's Office of Diversity and Educational Equity. "While we strive to present a wide range of styles and interests in our programs, this grant has allowed us to expand our exploration of heritages, lands and perspectives in film and literature," said Institute director Donald Faulkner.

Highlights of the Visiting Writers Series include Sapphire, author of the book that became the astonishing film, PRECIOUS; Ilyon Woo, whose nonfiction book The Great Divorce explores a legal battle that takes place in Albany and centers around the area's Shaker settlements; Gerald Vizenor, Native American novelist, poet and literary critic; Jean Valentine, the current State Poet of New York; and Kwame Anthony Appiah, one of the most lauded cultural theorists. The Classic Film Series features the documentary form with films ranging in subject from medieval witchcraft, to Louisa May Alcott, to the work of Ousmane Sembené, the "founding father" of African cinema, to Werner Herzog's mesmerizing salute to the natural wonders and researchers of the Antarctic.

VISITING WRITER SERIES

September 22 (Wednesday): ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Film screening with commentary by Henry Kaiser, producer, and Samuel Bowser, Wadsworth Center cellular biologist - 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Werner Herzog (United States, 2007, 99 minutes, color)

Starring David Ainley, Samuel Bowser, Regina Eisert

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD is maverick director Werner Herzog's nonfiction meditation on life in Antarctica-the region's terrifying natural wonders and peculiar fauna, as well as the scientists and support staff who sojourn there, under harsh conditions, for long periods of time.

Henry Kaiser produced the film, served as underwater photographer of its breath-taking sequences beneath the Antarctic sea ice, and composed the film's haunting soundtrack.

Samuel Bowser, research scientist at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health, provides expert commentary in the film. A specialist in cell structure and function, Bowser has spent three months of the year at research stations in the Antarctic since the mid-1980s.

Cosponsored by the School of Public Health in celebration of its 25th Anniversary

September 28 (Tuesday): The Archives Partnership Trust 2010 Empire State Archives and History Award with Richard Dreyfuss

7:30 p.m., The Egg, Center for the Performing Arts, Empire State Plaza, Albany Tickets: $10 (plus handling fees) Contact The Egg Box Office at 518-473-1845 or online at www.theegg.org

The 2010 Empire State Archives and History Award will be presented to Richard Dreyfuss, Academy Award-winning actor and passionate advocate for strengthening history education in schools. Harold Holzer, Trust board member and nationally prominent Lincoln scholar, will join in conversation with Dreyfuss.

Contact the Archives Partnership Trust at 518-473-7091 for more information about a private reception honoring Richard Dreyfuss.

October 7 (Thursday): Sigrid Nunez, novelist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Sigrid Nunez, prize-winning author, has been called "one of the most dizzyingly accomplished of our writers" (New York Times). Her latest novel is Salvation City (2010), about an orphaned 13-year-old boy who is adopted into a Christian fundamentalist community in the aftermath of a flu pandemic. Nunez's previous novels include The Last of Her Kind (2006), and For Rouenna (2001).

October 14 and 15: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: In Print and On Screen

October 14: (Thursday): Harriet Reisen, nonfiction writer, and Nancy Porter, film producer

Discussion, film clips, and reading - 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Harriet Reisen and Nancy Porter, creators of LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: THE WOMAN BEHIND LITTLE WOMEN - a documentary, directed by Porter for PBS's American Masters, and a biography, written by Reisen (2009), discuss the book and the film.

This event is made possible by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.

October 15 (Friday): Harriet Reisen, nonfiction writer, and Nancy Porter, film producer

Seminar - 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Harriet Reisen and Nancy Porter, producers of LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: THE WOMAN BEHIND LITTLE WOMEN, lead an informal seminar on what is involved in shaping history for general audiences.

Harriet Reisen's biography, Louisa May Alcott, was named a top ten book of 2009 by the Wall Street Journal, Booklist, and BookPage, and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her diverse credits include scripting dramatic and documentary films for PBS and HBO, and contributing radio commentary to Morning Edition and Marketplace.

Nancy Porter has produced and directed numerous documentaries and has won many awards, including a national Emmy, an American Film Festival Blue Ribbon, and three Cine Gold Eagle Awards. Her films include TYPHOID MARY: THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN AMERICA for Nova, and AMELIA EARHART and HOUDINI, for American Experience. Both events are presented by the UAlbany's Documentary Studies Program and Department of History in conjunction with the New York State Writers Institute and the M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, with support from University Auxiliary Services and the New York State Archives Partnership Trust.

October 20 (Wednesday): American Place Theatre performance of The Glass Castle

Performance - 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Pre-performance discussion at 7:00 p.m. $15 general public / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students

Box Office: (518) 442-3997 tickets@albany.edu

American Place Theatre presents a one-person theatrical adaptation of Jeannette Walls' unique memoir of survival and resiliency told through the eyes of a young girl. It is the saga of the restless Walls family, led by a crusty eccentric and his volatile artist wife.

Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the New York State Writers Institute.

October 21 (Thursday):Ilyon Woo, nonfiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 7:30 p.m., Shaker Meeting House, 25 Meeting House Road (near main entrance to Albany International Airport off of Heritage Lane), Albany

Ilyon Woo's book, The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times (2010), is a highly-praised work of popular history set in the Capital Region. Eunice Chapman seeks custody of her three children after their 1814 abduction by her estranged husband, who elected to become a member of the Watervliet Shaker Settlement, located near what is now the Albany International Airport.

Cosponsored by the Shaker Heritage Society

October 26 (Tuesday): Sapphire, poet and novelist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Sapphire, poet, performer, and author of the bestselling novel Push (1996), addresses a wide range of social issues in her work, including violence, sexual abuse, prostitution, and discrimination in its myriad forms. A publishing phenomenon, Push, the story of an obese, illiterate African American woman who becomes pregnant by her father, served as the basis for the Academy Award-winning film PRECIOUS (2009).

Cosponsored by the School of Public Health in celebration of its 25th Anniversary

November 9 (Tuesday): Gerald Vizenor, poet, fiction and nonfiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 7:30 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Gerald Vizenor, prolific novelist, poet, literary critic, and member of the Anishinaabe (Chippewa) people, has been called the "master trickster" of Native American literature (Diane Glancy). His newest novel, Shrouds of White Earth (2010), follows the struggles of an Anishinaabe painter among the ultra-traditionalists and "casino politicians" of his home reservation, and in the exotic world of contemporary High Art.

Cosponsored by SUNY Press in conjunction with the Second Annual John G. Neihardt Lecture. Reception to follow the evening reading.

November 11 (Thursday): Kwame Anthony Appiah, philosopher, scholar, and author

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Kwame Anthony Appiah, whose work encompasses the fields of moral philosophy, cultural theory and Africana Studies, is the author of the new book The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (2010), a landmark work that explores the dynamics of social changes that have led to the emancipation of women, slaves and other disenfranchised groups. A professor at Princeton, Appiah is the author of more than a dozen books, including Experiments in Ethics (2007), and Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Appiah also serves currently as President of the PEN American Center.

November 16 (Tuesday): Jean Valentine, New York State Poet

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 7:30 p.m., Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, Albany

Jean Valentine, winner of the National Book Award for the poetry volume Door in the Mountain (2004), received the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit and serves as New York State Poet (2008-2010). Valentine is best-known for poems of striking intensity that derive much of their structure and imagery from dreams. Her most recent collection is Break the Glass (2010), which Library Journal called "a rare pleasure… as elliptical and demanding as Emily Dickinson."

Cosponsored by Friends of the Albany Public Library

December 2 (Thursday): FENCE Fall 2010 Issue Launch

Reading - 7:30 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Jena Osman, 2009 National Poetry Series winner for The Network (Fence Books, 2010), will be the featured guest of the FENCE Fall 2010 Issue Launch. In selecting the book for the series, poet Prageeta Sharma called it "refreshing...full of inquiry that is sustainable and innovative."

CLASSIC FILM SERIES

September 22 (Wednesday): ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Film screening with commentary by Henry Kaiser, producer, and Samuel Bowser, Wadsworth Center cellular biologist - 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus (See Visiting Writers Series for additional information)

September 24 and October 1: THE FILMS OF OUSMANE SEMBÈNE

September 24 (Friday): MOOLAADÉ

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Ousmane Sembène (Senegal/Burkina Faso, 2004, 124 minutes, color, in Bambara and French with English subtitles)

Starring Fatoumata Coulibaly, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Salimata Traoré

Ousmane Sembène, towering figure of African cinema, was 81 when he directed this masterpiece about a dusty village in conflict over the practice of female genital mutilation. Writing in the Village Voice, J. Hoberman called it, "brilliant… a work of unpretentious simplicity and formal eloquence."

Cosponsored by the School of Public Health in celebration of its 25th Anniversary

October 1 (Friday): THE FILMS OF OUSMANE SEMBÈNE, continued

Film screening with commentary by Sembène biographer Samba Gadjigo - 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Samba Gadjigo, Professor of French and African Literature at Mt. Holyoke College, is the world's leading expert on the life and work of Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), Senegalese director and the "founding father" of African cinema. Gadjigo's new landmark biography, Ousmane Sembène: The Making of a Militant Artist (2010), is a richly detailed work based on unprecedented access to the famously private film director and members of his family. Gadjigo will offer commentary following the screening of the following films:

LA NOIRE DE… [BLACK GIRL] Directed by Ousmane Sembène (Senegal, 1966, 65 minutes, b/w, in French with English subtitles) Sembène's first feature is widely acknowledged as the "genesis" of African cinema. A stylish young African woman accepts a job as a domestic in the French Riviera only to discover that her employers regard her as little more than a slave.

L'HEROISME AU QUOTIDIEN [DAILY HEROISM] Directed by Ousmane Sembène (Senegal, 1999, 10 minutes, color, in French with English subtitles) Set in a small village in rural Senegal, the film is the first of a trilogy devoted to the daily heroism of African women at the beginning of the new century.

THE MAKING OF MOOLAADÉ Directed by Samba Gadjigo (United States/Burkina Faso, 2005, 20 minutes, color) Samba Gadjigo spent two weeks with Sembène in a rural village in Burkina Faso during the 2002 filming of MOOLAADÉ, the widely acclaimed drama about a women's uprising against female circumcision.

October 8 (Friday): "Portrait of the Cuban-American Artist as a Young New York Filmmaker" featuring Hugo Perez

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Film clips and commentary - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Hugo Perez, former NYSWI videographer and director of its WMHT television series, The Writer, is a rising filmmaker whose work explores various literary subjects and his Cuban-American heritage. Acclaimed documentaries include SUMMER SUN WINTER MOON (2008, to be screened on November 5–see schedule), about Native American poet Darrell Kipp, and NEITHER MEMORY NOR MAGIC (2007), about Jewish-Hungarian poet and Holocaust victim Miklos Radnoti.

October 15 (Friday): THE BLACK PIRATE

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Albert Parker (United States, 1926, 94 minutes, color, SILENT with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer)

Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove, Anders Randolf

Starring the greatest of all swashbucklers, Douglas Fairbanks (who wrote the script), THE BLACK PIRATE is widely hailed as one of the most spectacular action films of the silent era.

October 22 (Friday): HÄXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Benjamin Christensen (Denmark, 1922, 104 minutes, color tinted b/w, with Danish and English intertitles, silent with restored original score)

Starring Maren Pedersen, Clara Pontoppidan, Elith Pio, Oscar Stribolt

A one-of-a-kind silent quasi-documentary that mixes fact, fiction, woodcuts, dioramas, special effects, animation and live action, HÄXAN is an exploration of witchcraft and occult practices. Banned for decades for both adult content and satanic imagery, the film is occasionally hilarious, but often intense and frightening.

October 29 (Friday): DEAD OF NIGHT

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, and Robert Hamer (United Kingdom, 1945, 103 minutes, b/w)

Starring Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Googie Withers

A psychological thriller from England's much-admired Ealing Studios, DEAD OF NIGHT centers on a man who loses his sanity while listening to the ghost stories of fellow guests at a country house.

November 5 (Friday): Native American Double Feature

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

THE EXILES Directed by Kent MacKenzie (United States, 1961, 72 minutes, b/w) Starring Mary Donahue, Homer Nish, Clydean Parker

USC film student Kent MacKenzie's nearly forgotten semi-documentary about a day in the life of Native Americans living in LA has been declared an American classic nearly 50 years after its original release.

SUMMER SUN WINTER MOON Directed by Hugo Perez (United States, 2008, 56 minutes, color) Starring Darrell Kipp, Rob Kapilow

In this documentary by former Institute videographer Hugo Perez, the creation of a symphony inspired by the Lewis and Clark expedition brings together two men: an innovative composer trying to breathe new life into classical music, and a Blackfeet Indian writer fighting to save the Blackfeet language from extinction.

November 12 (Friday): ARAYA

Film Screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Margot Benacerraf (Venezuela, 1959, 90 minutes, b/w, in Spanish with English subtitles)

A stunningly photographed "documentary tone poem," ARAYA presents a day in the life of peasants who eke out a desperate existence harvesting salt on a remote Venezuelan peninsula. In 2010, Roger Ebert called it, "astonishing… so beautiful, so horrifying."

November 19 (Friday): RIDE WITH THE DEVIL

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Ang Lee (United States, 1999, 148 minutes, color)

Starring Jeffrey Wright, Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jewel

Ten years after its original release, Ang Lee reconstructs his vision for this quirky, ambitious Civil War epic in a new director's cut.

December 3 (Friday): AU HASARD BALTHAZAR [BALTHAZAR]

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Robert Bresson (France, 1966, 95 minutes, b/w, in French and Latin with English subtitles)

Starring Anne Wiazemsky, Walter Green, François Lafarge

Bresson's extraordinary tale of an all-suffering donkey, and his series of owners, is a masterpiece of visual storytelling. Writing in the New York Sun in 2005, Gary Giddins called it, "one of the most elegant, calculated, and strikingly textured films ever made."

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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Posted Wednesday August 25, 2010 at 11:41 am by New York State Writers Institute