PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 26, No. 20, May 17, 2007

brief notes

WILL
Students respond to hip-hop film
When filmmaker Byron Hurt visited Champaign-Urbana to speak about his new documentary on masculinity and hip-hop, the students in WILL’s Youth Media Workshop filmed the discussion. The students, who had invited Hurt to come, produced a half-hour video, including their own reaction. “Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Local Response” will be broadcast on WILL-TV at 9:58 p.m. May 25. The program follows a rebroadcast of Hurt’s documentary, “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” on “Independent Lens” at 9 p.m.

“For the follow-up program, the students interviewed Byron and the students also talked on camera about what they had learned from their hip-hop project,” said WILL’s Kimberlie Kranich, co-director of the Youth Media Workshop.

Hurt, a former college quarterback-turned-activist, is a self-described “hip-hop head” who took an in-depth look at masculinity and manhood in rap and hip-hop, where he says creative genius collides with misogyny, violence and homophobia.

The Youth Media Workshop used Hurt’s film to encourage students to take a critical look at hip-hop. One of the goals of the YMW project is affirming youth who create more socially relevant hip-hop, Kranich said. “One of our own students, Nick Green, wrote a rap that was featured on the national Web site for ‘Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,’ ” she said.

Krannert Center
Jazz Festival is June 6-8
It may not be summer yet, but UI musicians and guest artists are already getting in the groove for the 2007 Summer Jazz Festival at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, June 6-8.

Performances begin all three nights at 7:30 p.m., and will take place in the center’s Tryon Festival Theater.

This year’s festival will highlight the classic sounds of legendary pianist, band leader and composer Duke Ellington. Also featured will be work by Don Ellis, the post-Big-Band era composer, band leader, drummer and trumpeter who arrived on the jazz scene on the heels of the Big Band era and is known for his unusual time signatures and electronic instruments and devices.

Free pre-concert talks with UI musicology professor Jeffrey Magee will begin each night at 6:45 in the Krannert Room.
Returning festival guest Jon Faddis will be the featured performer on the June 6 opening program, “Duke Ellington: Carnegie Hall Concert of 1943.” The following night’s theme is “The Music of Don Ellis.”

The festival wraps up on June 8 with the focus back on Ellington. “The Symphonic Duke Ellington,” conducted by Maurice Peress will feature Faddis; UI music professor Ian Hobson, piano; and Siri Howard, voice.

Tickets may be purchased by phone or e-mail at 333-6280 or kran-tix@uiuc.edu.

Journalism
Students and staff report from China
Journalism professor Nancy Benson and the students in her international reporting course were due to arrive in Shanghai on May 16 for a two-week stint as foreign correspondents in China.

The group will be based first in Shanghai and then Beijing, making trips to nearby locations as needed, according to Benson.
Those wanting to follow the progress of their trip can do so through an online blog at http://will.atlas.uiuc.edu/index.php/chinablog. (One event on the schedule: dinner in Shanghai with UI alumni and Chancellor Richard Herman.)

Tom Rogers, news director for WILL-AM (580), is joining Benson as one of the professionals overseeing the trip and the reporting. John Paul, from WILL-TV, and Michael Koliska, a student reporter for WILL-AM (580), will be going as graduate students in the course. Filling out the rest of the group will be eight undergraduates.

Their stories will appear on WILL television and radio broadcasts later this year or early in 2008, Benson said.

Among the stories planned by the students: how Illinois companies are involved in China, either through trade or outsourcing; how Chinese students view political change; how used computers from Illinois end up in one of the most polluted and poverty-stricken regions in China; Internet addiction; workers’ living conditions; birth control policy; and how Illinois is helping China with soybean production.

This is the second trip for Benson’s international reporting course. The first trip was to Peru in 2005.

I Space
Art of filmmaking featured in Chicago
The art of filmmaking will be featured directly and indirectly in two new exhibitions at I space, the Chicago gallery of the UI.

• “The Magic Hour” (closes June 9), an installation by UI alumna and Los Angeles-based artist Mary Anna Pomonis, is inspired by the time of day in Los Angeles prized by filmmakers for its light quality: sunset. Pomonis re-creates that pre-dusk mood and ambiance in her installation, which features hundreds of tiny paintings of sunsets paired with several small children’s wading pools filled with sand.
  
• “Oliver Held: Frameworks” (closes July 7) features three videos by the Cologne, Germany-based filmmaker, video and installation artist. Held’s work has been exhibited widely in Europe, as well as at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the 19th International Children’s Film Festival in Chicago, where it received the Certificate of Excellence.
  The films on view at I space explore events, time, memory and the layering that happen in between. Among them is “Gone,” in which Held re-creates a scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film “Blowup,” in which the photographer returns to a scene to photograph a dead body, only to discover it is missing.
  The gallery, located at 230 W. Superior St., Chicago, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
  

Krannert Art Museum
Free yoga sessions Thursdays at noon
For those seeking a lunch-time alternative this summer, the UI’s Krannert Art Museum will be hosting yoga sessions at noon on Thursdays, beginning May 31.

The one-hour sessions, free and open to the public, run through July 19 (no session July 5), and will be taught by Deb Lister, owner and director of the Living Yoga Center, Champaign.

Classes will be held in the Curriculum Research Lab on the lower level of the museum.

For more information, contact Anne Sautman, 244-0516.

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