Citizen Blue
Preceded by Skip Day
With Daniel Miller, Ivete Lucas, and Patrick Bresnan
James Blue (1930–1980) is regarded as one of the important voices in social activist filmmaking, an early driving force in media arts education, and a catalyst in the formation of regional film arts organizations. University of Oregon professor Dan Miller’s film explores the legacy of this Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, educator, and historian. Blue is best known for his Cannes Film Festival prizewinning Les Oliviers de la Justice (The Olive Trees of Justice, 1962) about a Frenchman returning to his native Algiers to witness mass exploitation. His other important films remain classics, including The March (1964), which chronicled the civil rights march on Washington, D.C. and Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, and the Academy Award©-nominated A Few Notes on Our Food Problem (1968), about the growing issue of world hunger. Blue was founder of Rice University Media Center and a leader in the movement to democratize media access and production across America, including Houston’s Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP), a media arts organization founded in 1977.
| Country, Year | United States, 2017 |
|---|---|
| Director | Daniel Miller |
| Language | English |
| Runtime | 85 MINS, 00 SECS |
| Genre | Documentary |
| Subject | History |
| Event Type | Film |
For seniors in Pahokee, a small, mainly African- American industrial town on Florida's Lake Okeechobee, the Monday after prom is 'Skip Day.' Dozens of the students, miss their lessons, driving 60 miles to hang out and ponder their futures on the windy dunes of the Atlantic shoreline. The film intimately observes the shared joys of communal activity and extravagant display which bind these boisterous teenagers in their rites of passage towards an uncertain adulthood.
| Country, Year | United States, 2018 |
|---|---|
| Director | Patrick Bresnan, Ivete Lucas |
| Producer | Patrick Bresnan, Ivete Lucas |
| Language | English |
| Runtime | 17 MINS, 00 SECS |
| Genre | Documentary |
| Subject | History |
| Event Type | Film |
Special Guests
Daniel Miller
Daniel Miller teaches classes on documentary film history and production in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Miller founded and currently directs the Oregon Documentary Project, which has supported the production of over 60 award-winning student documentary films for public and commercial broadcast. His own film work includes Dream to Fly on Howard Hughes’ aviation achievements, Making Pictures on the Eugene Register-Guard’s influential photojournalism staff, and Fire in the Heartland on the student movements as well as the shootings that took place at Kent State and at Jackson State universities in May 1970. This film was an official selection at the 2010 Cleveland International Film Festival and the opening event at the 40th Anniversary Commemoration of the shootings at Kent and Jackson from May 1-May 4, 2010.
Ivete Lucas & Patrick Bresnan
Born in Brazil, Ivete Lucas started her career in Mexico and now lives in the United States. Her short documentary, The Send Off, co-directed with her partner Patrick Bresnan, premiered at Sundance in 2016 and won jury awards at SXSW, AFI Fest, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Skip Day, which she directed and produced, premiered at Quinzaine des Réalisasteurs in May 2018. The duo was named among Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2016.
Patrick Bresnan is a visual artist and filmmaker. After a formative period working for prominent Mission School artists Barry McGee (aka Twist) and Clare Rojas, he co-directed the short documentary The Send Off (2016) with his partner Ivete Lucas. Their short The Rabbit Hunt premiered at Sundance in 2017 prior to competing at the Berlinale and has won over 20 awards including The Cinema Eye Honor. In 2017, he and Lucas directed the short Roadside Attraction which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival.