Writing for Digital Media Blog #5
Roger Ebert’s Legacy While I was on exchange, studying in Hawaii during the Fall semester of 2016, I was able to participate in the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF). Before the commencement of the festival I learned about the Roger Ebert young writers of the Arts program. I applied and was successful. My knowledge of Roger Ebert before the festival was limited and I had such an intriguing experience I decided to investigate his career further. Roger Ebert was born on the 18th of June in 1942 and he only recently passed away on the 4th of April in 2013. He was an American film critic, a Historian, a screenwriter, journalist and an author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 2005, Ebert became the first film critic to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2015 HIFF hosted the second annual Ebert young writers program for the arts. Chaz Ebert, his widow, works very closely with the program and she actually Skype called through during the second workshop and introduced herself and spoke individually with each of this years participants. She even sent through a signed copy of his latest book for each of these years young writers. The mandate for the program is: “In a swiftly changing media environment, informed writing and criticism on cinema is vital to a strong film culture and industry. This program’s mandate is to broaden and strengthen film criticism culture in Hawaii and teach young writers classical, as well as current methods and tasks in critical thinking and writing by reviewing films and interviewing filmmakers in a live film festival setting” (HIFF official website 2016). The mentor for the 2016 workshop is film critic, arts writer and actress, Sheila O’Malley. Sheila is a regular film critic for Rogerebrt.com . Sheila has an Master of Fine Arts in acting from the Actors Studio MFA program. Her work has also appeared in Film Comment, The Dissolve, Masters of Cinema, Movie Mezzanine, Flavorwire, Capital New York, Fandor, Press Play, and Bright Wall/Dark Room. One her most interesting achievements id that she wrote the narration which was read by Angelina Jolie - for the 2016 Governor Awards. Sheila writes about actors, movies, and Elvis Presley at her personal site, The Sheila Variations. I enjoyed blogs on practically all 12 seasons of Supernatural.
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AuthorNicoleRoseAnna an Aquarian, middle child, grand-daughter, sister, aunty, cousin and niece. On the road to becoming a Sociologist specialising in Film & Television. Archives
December 2016
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