The Department of Cinema Studies proudly welcomed award-winning filmmaker Kent Jones to campus for the fourth annual Harlan J. Strauss "Visiting Filmmaker Series."
This series featured a public conversation and reception with Kent Jones as well as two free film screenings, followed by Q&A’s with Jones. As part of the two-week residency on campus, Jones also mentored students and guest lectured in the spring term course “CINE 426: The Art of Directing.”
CINE 426: “The Art of Directing”
This class focused on the building blocks to develop a narrative director’s voice. Students explored how to create compelling characters and use the power of cinematic language to affect audiences. The award-winning filmmaker Kent Jones guest taught four classes, sharing his approach to directing and providing feedback on a specific film exercise. The class viewed and discussed films that have influenced Jones’s work, investigated narrative tools and aesthetics, and critiqued classmates’ work as a way to integrate theory into practice. By the end, students were empowered to generate strategies to create personal, original films.
Visiting Filmmaker Series Talk and Reception
UO students, faculty, staff, and the community were invited to a discussion with award-winning writer and director Kent Jones about his experience as a film critic, festival director, and filmmaker. An appetizer and dessert reception followed the discussion. Kent Jones is an internationally recognized filmmaker, film critic, and festival programmer. He was named one of Variety’s 10 directors to watch for 2019 for his debut fiction film, Diane (2019), which won Best Narrative Feature and Screenplay at the Tribeca Film Festival. One of the great thinkers on directors and cinema history, Jones wrote and directed the documentaries Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015) and Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007). He has collaborated on a number of film projects with Martin Scorsese–including A Letter to Elia (2010) and My Voyage to Italy (1999)–and was executive director of the World Cinema Foundation, a film preservation non-profit founded by Scorsese. Jones is also known for his sharp and personal film criticism, collected in the 2007 book, Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism. Since 2012, Jones has served as the director of the New York Film Festival, the premier showcase for international cinema in the United States.
Screenings of Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015) and Diane (2019) followed by “Question and Answer” Sessions with Director Kent Jones
During spring term 2019, the Strauss endowment featured two films written and directed by Kent Jones. The first event featured a screening of Hitchcock/Truffaut at the Bijou Art Cinemas. The event included an introduction to the film by Jones as well as a Q&A with Jones after the screening.The film won "Best Documentary" at the 2015 Denver International Film Festival and was nominated for the "Golden Eye Award" at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
The final event in the Visiting Filmmaker Series focused on the newest film by Kent Jones, Diane, which won Best Feature, Best Cinematography, and Best Screenplay at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was the official selection at the 2018 Locarno International Film Festival and 2018 Chicago International Film Festival. The event included an introduction to the film by Jones as well as a Q&A with Jones and the film's costume designer, Carisa Kelly. During the Visiting Filmmaker Series, Kelly also spent time discussing costume design with Cinema Studies and Theater Arts students.