Walt Whitman: A Showing of the PBS Documentary and a Discussion with Filmmaker Mark Zwonitzer, BJ '84 [Print This Page]
- Time: 2-4 p.m., a showing of the documentary; 4-5 p.m., a discussion with Mark Zwonitzer
- Date: Wednesday, Sept. 10
- Place: Jesse Auditorium
- Free and Open to the Public
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"Artfully enthralling," wrote TV Guide, when the documentary Walt Whitman premiered on PBS earlier this year.
Newsday called it "a big, strapping beautiful film that brings Whitman and his world to life."
"An extraordinary act of intimacy. I can't remember the last time a TV biography brought me so near to the spirit of a man so long gone," the Boston Globe reviewer wrote.
"The moments when television reaches for the sublime, the beautiful, the poetic and transporting are few," United Features Syndicate said, "and viewers in search of that transcendent moment shouldn't miss Walt Whitman."
When his epic and seminal work of American poetry, Leaves of Grass, first appeared, Walt Whitman was denounced as "vile," "beastly," a "lunatic, raving in pitiable delirium." One critic suggested Whitman be publicly whipped, another that he commit suicide. The first edition of Leaves of Grass sold a few dozen copies. A lesser man would have been shamed into silence. Whitman spoke louder, sounding his "barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world." Today, 116 years after his death, his voice still resounds. Leaves of Grass is more vital and more relevant than ever.
Walt Whitman, a two-hour documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Mark Zwonitzer, BJ '84, featuring Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper, BGS '76, as the voice of the poet, tells the story of Whitman and his unlikely mission to redeem a faltering America through poetry.
Lesser known is that Whitman was also a journalist. Starting as a printer's apprentice, he worked as a writer, printer, editor and teacher before editing the Long Islander in New York. In his late twenties, Whitman was the editor of the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle and then the New Orleans Crescent, returning to Brooklyn in 1848 to edit the Daily Freeman newspaper, which opposed the extension of slavery into areas that had not become states. During the first half of the next decade, Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, and served as editor of the Brooklyn Times. Throughout his life Whitman wrote essays and articles for diverse newspapers and publications.
The event is co-sponsored by the MU Department of English.
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Mark Zwonitzer
Documentary Filmmaker
Mark Zwonitzer, BJ '84, has produced, directed and written award-winning documentary films for public television for more than 15 years. His work includes Battle of the Bulge; The Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson; The Irish in America: Long Journey Home; All Across America; Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (with Richard Ben Cramer); Transcontinental Railroad; and The Massie Affair. He was the series producer and writer of a four-hour history of the United States Supreme Court, which won the 2007 International Documentary Association Outstanding Limited Series, the Cine Golden Eagle Special Jury Award and the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award. His most recent film, Walt Whitman, was nominated in July for two Primetime Emmys, including one for "Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking." Over the past decade, his work has also been recognized with a duPont-Columbia Award, a George Foster Peabody Award, a Writers' Guild of America Award and the Japan Foundation's President's Prize. Zwonitzer's first book, with co-author Charles Hirshberg, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and an American Library Association's Booklist Editor's Choice in biography.
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