#besides who wants to come back to mississippi delta

[gooch-cancer]

just discovered that donna tartt is from my family's hometown and WENT TO MY COUSINS SCHOOL

i'm losing my mind i'm utterly losing it THATS WHY HER ACCENT WAS SO FAMILIAR WHEN I LISTENED TO TSH AUDIOBOOK!!!!

[oscopelabs]

“From One White Man to Another”: Sex, Bigotry and Desperation in Elia Kazan’s ‘Baby Doll’ by Judy Berman

It can be disappointing to read what great filmmakers have to say about their movies. But rarely has a director seemed to misunderstand his own work as completely as Elia Kazan, in a lengthy interview about his sole comedy, Baby Doll (1956), that appears in Jeff Young’s book Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films. “It has no meaning,” he claimed. “By the time I got to Baby Doll, I was determined to make a picture with no sympathy and no heroes.”

Kazan appears to be describing a very different film from the one he made. Set in a small Mississippi Delta town just months before Brown v. Board of Education made segregated public schools illegal, and scripted by Tennessee Williams (with lots of uncredited assistance from Kazan), Baby Doll is essentially a Southern Gothic three-hander. Carroll Baker, who also appeared in the George Stevens classic Giant in 1956, plays the title character, a beautiful 19-year-old who’s married to the hapless, middle-aged cotton gin owner Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden). Their union is the result of a tragedy and a lie: Baby Doll’s ailing father wanted to ensure her financial security before he died, and Archie Lee led the terminally ill man to believe he could give her a life of luxury. Now, the unhappy couple dwells in a squalid, crumbling mansion. Because Archie Lee promised Baby Doll’s father that he wouldn’t touch her before her 20th birthday, the marriage remains unconsummated—and everyone in town seems to know it.

Two days before that date, the furniture the Meighans have purchased on an installment plan gets hauled away for nonpayment and Baby Doll threatens to move out. A desperate Archie Lee burns down a new cotton gin that has stolen all of his business so that his rickety contraption will once again be the only game in town. Their bizarre love triangle is completed when his rival, Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach, in his first major film role), a Sicilian from Corpus Christi, arrives at the Meighans’ to drop off the cotton he can no longer process. Vacarro has no doubt that Archie Lee set the fire, and when a good ol’ boy cop refuses to investigate an outsider’s “reckless” charges, he decides to handle the matter himself. “I come from a very old country where it’s tradition for every man to make his own justice,” says Vacarro. He’s also shrewd enough to realize that if he wants a confession, he’s best off going through Baby Doll.

Williams’ script, based on his plays 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and The Unsatisfactory Supper, is a master class in character creation. Baker, Wallach and Malden (who’d already won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for another Kazan collaboration, A Streetcar Named Desire), all Actors Studio alums, fully inhabit their rich roles. Sharp-tongued, imperious and naive, Baby Doll comes off as even younger than her 19 years. Archie Lee, a whiny drunk whose insecurity about his masculinity might stem from impotence, lies and commits arson out of a belief that, despite his lack of any discernible charm or skills, he deserves a thriving business and a gorgeous wife half his age. Although he’s slick and menacing on the surface, Vacarro’s true motives are harder to read.

Each represents a stereotype: the bratty ingénue, the entitled white man, the sneaky and enterprising immigrant. But, contrary to Kazan’s insistence that this black comedy has no overarching meaning or sympathy for its leads, Williams never lets us forget how deeply their roles in society have shaped these characters’ personalities and expectations about each other. For Baby Doll, Vacarro and even, to some extent, Archie Lee, identity is a trap.

Kazan didn’t see Baby Doll’s central trio as particularly complicated people. He claimed to identify most closely with the film’s nastiest character, Archie Lee, who he described to Young as a classic “middle-aged cuckold”: “pathetic, funny, amusing tragic.” Meanwhile, Vacarro is “as ridiculous as a rooster because you know tomorrow morning somebody’s going to go out there with an axe and cut his head off.” His dismissal of Baby Doll is particularly dispiriting. “I know a lot of girls who are like Baby Doll,” he told Young. “You say to yourself, ‘She’s such a bore.’ Fifteen minutes later you’re going to bed with her. ‘God, she’s a good kid. Oh boy, she’s a cute little animal.’ And you like her. You think, ‘What’s the difference what her ideas are?’”

The director’s appraisal of Archie Lee is solid, if incomplete, although the character doesn’t necessarily begin the film a cuckold. His biggest obstacle is that, as a white landowner, his expectations for his own life exceed his intelligence and abilities. Vacarro has the opposite problem: He’s smart and successful, but lives in a town that doesn’t take kindly to newcomers (or consider Sicilians white), where local police have no interest in protecting his property. What Kazan sees as Vacarro’s foolishness is actually desperation. Sure, he has a lot to lose by challenging Archie Lee. But his other option is to quietly absorb the destruction of his livelihood.  

Like Vacarro, Baby Doll is manipulative out of necessity, yet ultimately sympathetic. And she’s never boring. We first glimpse her, a minute or so into the film, asleep in an open crib. She’s clad in a style of nightgown now called a “baby doll dress” in the character’s honor, sucking her thumb. She awakens to the sight of sad, old Archie Lee carving a hole in the wall so that he can watch her. The scene looks tame now, but it’s remarkably explicit for its time, as the introduction to a movie that TIME pronounced “possibly the dirtiest American made motion picture that has ever been exhibited.” In fact, it was barely exhibited following the Catholic League of Decency’s crusade to keep it out of theaters, and is now most famous for the scandal it caused.

Soon enough, Archie Lee gropes—and maybe even attempts to rape—Baby Doll. We watch him walk into the bathroom where she’s in the tub. Because the Production Code Administration insisted that Kazan cut a shot of Archie Lee touching her while she’s bathing, the camera remains in the hallway as Baby Doll screams, “Get your hands off me!” The scene may have been meant as a lighthearted demonstration of a husband’s sexual frustration, but, six decades later, it reads as a much darker moment. Another early shot finds Baby Doll licking an ice cream cone as local men chuckle and leer at her, while a little girl sitting nearby eats her dessert unmolested. As an adult woman, even her most innocuous, childlike actions are sexualized.

When Vacarro arrives at the Meighans’ estate, such as it is, Baby Doll’s attraction to him is obvious. She looks wide awake, and flustered, for the first time in the film. Ostensibly assuming she won’t be hard to seduce, he takes advantage of her arousal, hoping he can sweet-talk her into incriminating her husband. While Archie Lee attempts to get his broken cotton gin working, Vacarro follows Baby Doll around their yard. Much of their dialogue is hilarious: When he offers her a pecan from a nearby tree, she proclaims, “I wouldn’t dream of eatin’ a nut a man had cracked in his mouth.” Clearly stifling a chuckle, he murmurs, “You’ve got many refinements.”  

At other moments, though, Vacarro seems to pose a physical threat to Baby Doll. In a rusting car on the Meighans’ lawn, he sits next to her and throws his leg across her body, trapping her inside. “Would you move your leg?” she pleads, more than once, before scrambling out of the vehicle. He crowds in beside her on a swing, puts his arm around her and picks a piece of cotton lint off the front of her shirt. He leans in, and she leans away. When she stands up, she goes weak in the knees. “The scene on the swings in Baby Doll is my exact idea of what eroticism in films should be,” Kazan told Young. But Baker has just as much fear in her eyes as excitement. Eventually, Baby Doll runs away and threatens to call out to a boy in the street. Then she appeals to Archie Lee, who slaps her, in front of his workers, for interrupting him.

The implication isn’t just that Vacarro might seduce Baby Doll, although her weakness and confusion in the face of a man she finds desirable all but prove she’s too inexperienced to be as promiscuous as Archie Lee, Vacarro and various townspeople seem to believe. Even if the Production Code wouldn’t allow Kazan and Williams to spell it out, it’s clear enough that she’s afraid he might rape her—and that stereotypes about swarthy foreigners contributes to that fear. After he sends her husband away on an unnecessary errand, they take turns chasing each other around the house, until Vacarro corners her in the Meighans’ falling-apart basement and forces her to sign an affidavit confirming Archie Lee’s guilt. It’s only after they regress back to childhood together, with Vacarro napping in the crib while she sings to him, that Baby Doll regains her composure. In that moment, he begins to genuinely fall in love with her.

Of course, when Archie Lee gets home, the tension between all three characters explodes. Vacarro taunts him with the prospect that their newly forged partnership will require Baby Doll to “entertain” the Sicilian on a daily basis. When she comes downstairs for dinner, she’s changed into a black dress that makes her look more grown up (and allies her with Vacarro, who also wears black). The new lovers kiss for what appears to be the first time while Archie Lee phones some influential friends who he hopes will help him permanently take out his rival. Their dinner abruptly ends with Archie Lee chasing Vacarro around the yard, shotgun ablaze, as Baby Doll calls the local police on her husband.

While the film never loses its comic tone, its resolution makes a much darker, more serious statement than Kazan acknowledged. As he’s being arrested, Archie Lee appeals to a cop—“from one white man to another”—to make sure Vacarro goes home and leave his wife alone. He obliges and assures the man he’s just caught attempting murder, “We gonna have to go through this thing for appearance’s sake.” It seems inevitable that Archie Lee will be released the next morning and that, when he is, he’ll come looking for Vacarro. Nothing is stopping him from killing the Sicilian; if he succeeds, he’ll get his wife and his business back. His buddies on the squad surely won’t bother to investigate the murder. Although Vacarro is the better man by every measure—as he tells Archie Lee at dinner, “I’m foreign, Meighan, but I’m not revengeful” —he can’t defeat small-town xenophobia.

And then there’s poor Baby Doll, who won’t know where her life is headed until one of these two potential rapists emerges victorious. “We got nothin’ to do but wait till tomorrow and see if we’re remembered or forgotten,” she tells her aunt, who serves as the Meighans’ incompetent live-in cook, in the film’s final line of dialogue. Baby Doll’s beauty, which probably seemed like an asset when her father married her off to a supposedly rich man, can’t liberate her—and she finally realizes that. This is as grim a view of women’s plight as you’ll see in pre-1960s cinema.    

It’s Williams’ multilayered script and Baker’s psychologically rich performance, along with Kazan’s singular ability to wring transcendent work out of his actors, that elevate the film beyond its director’s limited ambitions for the story. “You can’t take Baby Doll seriously,” Kazan admonished Young at one point in their interview. But, to his credit, you can.

[blackrockandrollmusic-blog]

For many young black musicians, especially those growing up in the South, learning about the blues came by accident and outside the home. Many in the older generation moved away from traditional blues because they considered it antiquated, or representing hardships endured by previous generations they’d prefer to forget.

“A lot of my white friends knew more about the blues than I did. Their parents educated them about it. But we didn’t listen to that type of music when I was growing up,” says Jarekus Singleton, 29, from Clinton, Miss. “I kind of feel bad for my generation because we didn’t have those people teaching us. But we have the responsibility now.”

Even in the cradle of the blues, the Mississippi Delta, the music has fallen in stature among millennial-aged African Americans: According to polling conducted last August by University of Mississippi doctoral candidate Nicholas Gorrell, when asked to name their favorite music, those aged 18 to 29 in the Delta said they most preferred R&B and hip-hop, with the blues a distant third.

The racial shift among blues audiences started decades ago, following the folk revival and, later, the British Invasion, when much of white America heard black music for the first time. At the same time, black audiences identified more with soul, funk and, eventually, hip-hop; up-and-coming black musicians, to stay commercially relevant, followed suit.

“Young black audiences no longer viewed the blues as pop music,” says Adam Gussow, a professor of Southern studies at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. “Music of the now became soul music because it was about rebellion and it was about pride.”

Among blues purists, there was concern that blacks would abandon the music altogether, a scenario many thought might distort the very qualities that made it feel genuine.

Jim O’Neal, founder of Living Blues magazine, said the publication earned its name in 1970 “because people said [blues] was dead.” “We didn’t see any young black musicians coming up and we felt the old music was dying out,” he says. “But it continued.”For decades, stars such as guitarist Buddy Guy have carried the torch while complaining that the blues has been relegated to the back seat of the music industry as radio programmers, club operators and major record labels became less interested in supporting what they consider the foundation of black music.

“My children didn’t know who the hell I was until they turned 21 and could come to my club and see me play,” Guy says. “They grew up in the house with me and would say ‘cut it out playing the blues!’ At one point, I thought that maybe, lyrically, the blues was unfit to sing around kids. But then hip-hop stepped in.

”With second-generation blues artists such as Robert Cray, Billy Branch and Kenny Neal now playing elder-statesmen roles, the crop of younger black blues musicians who can take the tradition and transform it with their own identity is relatively slim. Besides Birchwood and Singleton, other emerging up-and-comers include Marquise Knox, 24, of St. Louis, Blind Boy Paxton, 25, of Los Angeles, and the Peterson Brothers, ages 15 and 17, of Austin.

Otis Clay, the soul music legend from Chicago who entered the Blues Hall of Fame last year, says that once radio segregated blues from other genres, “fans and the music suffered.”

“It’s understandable that young blacks are not getting the chance to hear blues,” he says. He worries that there will soon be a dearth of teachers who will be able to coach younger players in the music: “I learned from the older guys, but what about the other black guys who are out there that want to genuinely play the music? That says a lot about where the music is going to go.” [Read More]

[kansascityhappenings]

Mississippi students suspended from frat after posing in front of Emmett Till memorial sign with guns

https://embed-prod.vemba.io/vemba-embed.js

Three white University of Mississippi students have been suspended from their fraternity after a photo showing them posing with guns in front of a sign memorializing Emmett Till surfaced earlier this week.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is also reportedly investigating.

The sign, which is posted outside Glendora, Mississippi, is there to commemorate the murder of Till, a 14-year-old African American who was tortured and killed in 1955 after accusations that he flirted with a white woman.

He was shot in the head and thrown into the Tallahatchie River by two white men. His death became an important catalyst in the civil rights movement.

The students in the photo, which was obtained by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica, were standing beside the sign. The sign appears to be riddled with bullet holes, but it’s unclear whether the students were connected to the damage.

Deborah Watts, Emmett’s cousin and co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, said she saw the photo Thursday and doesn’t know who may have vandalized the sign.

“It marks a pretty solemn spot. This marks the spot where Emmett was shot, lynched and beaten,” Watts told CNN. “To see them standing there, smiling, is disappointing, but not surprising.”

The image was posted to the private Instagram account of one of the students in March, with the message “one of Memphis’s finest and the worst influence I’ve ever met,” the news outlets reported.

“When I think about that photo — it’s a motivator,” Watts said. “It means our work is more important today than it has ever been.”

A spokesman for the University of Mississippi on Friday identified two of the students in the photo.

One of them, Ben LeClere, is currently enrolled at the school as a junior and is majoring in managerial finance, according to Rod Guajardo. The second, John Lowe, is not currently enrolled at the school. The status and identity of the third student remains unclear.

CNN is attempting to reach the students for comment.

School officials knew about the photo in March

Jesse Lyons, a spokesman for Kappa Alpha, said the students were suspended Wednesday after the chapter’s leadership was made aware of the photo the night before.

“The making of the photo was unrelated to any event or activity of our chapter,” the fraternity’s Ole Miss chapter said in a statement. “The photo is inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable. It does not represent our chapter.”

University officials had learned of the photo in March after they received a bias report through the school’s office of student conduct, said Rod Guajardo, a university spokesman.

The university police later reported the image to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which Guajardo said declined to investigate the incident because the photo did not pose a specific threat.

He said the university sees the image as “offensive and hurtful” but it does not represent a violation of the university’s code of conduct.

“It occurred off campus and was not part of a university-affiliated event,” he said.

“We support the actions made by the Kappa Alpha Order leadership in suspending the students involved, and we are aware that this decision is backed by its National Administrative Offices.”

One of the students pictured is currently enrolled as a junior and is majoring in managerial finance, according to Guajardo. A second is not currently enrolled at the university. The status of the third student remains unclear.

US Attorney Chad Lamar of the Northern District of Mississippi in Oxford told the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica on Thursday that information about the photo was referred to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for further investigation.

CNN has reached out to Lamar for comment.

A bulletproof sign will be installed

The sign has been vandalized on multiple occasions, and stolen at least once, according to the Emmett Till Memorial Commission — the group responsible for the sign.

“Our signs and ones like them have been stolen, thrown in the river, replaced, shot, replaced again, shot again, defaced with acid and have had KKK spray painted on them. The vandalism has been targeted and it has been persistent,” Patrick Weems, the group’s executive director, said in a statement Thursday.

Weems did not discuss the photo or confirm whether the sign was damaged this year.

The first sign went up along the river in 2007. It was stolen the following year and was never found, Weems had said.

Eight years later, its replacement was riddled with bullet holes in multiple acts of vandalism. Last year, a third sign was put up near the river and was shot up 35 days later. A professor from nearby Delta State University found the sign defaced by bullet holes, Weems said last year.

A fourth sign — a bulletproof sign — is expected to be installed at the site soon, the group said Thursday.

“We believe it is important to keep a sign at this historic site, but we don’t want to hide the legacy of racism by constantly replacing broken signs,” the statement said. “The commission hopes this sign will endure, and that it will continue to spark conversations about Till, history, and racial justice.”

What happened to Emmett Till?

Till’s killing in 1955 shook the nation and helped fuel the civil rights movement.

Emmett had traveled to Mississippi from Chicago to visit his great-uncle when he was falsely accused of flirting with Carolyn Bryant, a 21-year-old at the time. Bryant and her husband, Roy, owned a grocery store in Money, Mississippi.

Days later, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, rousted the teen from his bed and ordered him into the bed of a pickup truck. They beat him mercilessly. Then they took his life by shooting him in the head.

To get rid of Emmett’s body, his killers strapped a 75-pound cotton gin fan to his neck with barbed wire. That way he’d be weighed down when they threw his battered body in the Tallahatchie. It was found days later.

Bryant and Milam went on trial less than a month after Emmett’s body was pulled from the river. There were witnesses who saw them. The men admitted they had kidnapped Emmett.

But Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury. A year later, they confessed but double jeopardy laws prevented them from facing another trial.

Emmett’s mother demanded an open-casket funeral and forbade attempts to hide his injuries. Gruesome photos of the boy’s mutilated body spread across the globe, lending jarring visuals to the stories of violence and discrimination coming out of the South.

Emmett would have turned 78 on Thursday.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/07/26/university-of-mississippi-students-suspended-after-posing-in-front-of-emmett-till-memorial-sign-with-guns/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/07/26/mississippi-students-suspended-from-frat-after-posing-in-front-of-emmett-till-memorial-sign-with-guns/

[hottytoddynews]

After 33 years of shooting photographs for the university, Robert Jordan is looking forward to a slower pace. Photo by Kevin Bain/Ole Miss Communications

  For more than three decades, Robert Jordan has profoundly shaped how the world perceives the University of Mississippi. His photographs have documented the natural beauty of the Oxford campus through all seasons, captured critical moments of thrilling athletic triumphs and conveyed the dedication and achievements of its faculty, staff, students and alumni.

But after shooting more than a million photos, Jordan, director of university photography, is looking forward to a slower pace. He retired at the end of the fall semester and already has a few goals for the coming months.

“I’m looking forward to sleeping late, playing some golf, reading some books and spending time with my wife,” he said. “I’ll always have that itch, and I’ll be taking photographs as long as I’m able, but it will be for fun, not how I make my living.”

Jordan’s work played a critical role in the university’s rise as a respected public university, Chancellor Emeritus Robert Khayat said.

“I knew at the outset in ’95 that Robert would be a key player in what we were doing here at Ole Miss,” Khayat said. “I knew we had a beautiful campus, attractive people and gorgeous trees and buildings and spaces, and we just needed to show everybody.

“Robert is a gifted artist. He could make that camera talk. He is quiet, unobtrusive, humble, kind and patient. He would take the time to shoot an assignment over and over until he got exactly what we needed, and he made remarkable contributions to the university that will be treasured and studied forever.”

In a field where people frequently change jobs, Jordan has spent virtually his entire professional career at Ole Miss. He graduated in December 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and got a job in Greenville as a photographer at the Delta Democrat-Times.

“Newspaper work is exciting, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my degree,” he recalled.

So barely four months later, when somebody from the UM Department of Public Relations called with the news that Jack Cofield was retiring as university photographer, Jordan jumped at the opportunity to return to his alma mater.

“The thing that’s so cool about being a university photographer is that you never know from one day to the next what you’re going to be doing,” he said. “You may be shooting an event for the chancellor’s office one day and then going into a lab to photograph some researcher’s work the next. And then you may shoot outstanding students right after that.

“The challenge every day is to see the campus with new eyes and see something you’ve never seen before. I still get excited when I see something new.”

Over his 33 years on campus, Jordan has shot an estimated 10,000 assignments and mentored dozens of rising young photographers. Among them are Kevin Bain, who has worked as one of the university’s photographers for 18 years, and Thomas Graning, the department’s newest photographer.

Bain began working for the old Imaging Services Department as a student, answering phones and helping customers with orders.

“That was back in the film days, and if he saw I didn’t have much to do, he was cool about saying, ‘Here’s a roll of film. Go out and see what you can do,'” Bain said. “I was an English major, and he was really good about showing me how to get different kinds of shots.”

Jordan also befriended Bruce Newman, photographer at the Oxford Eagle for the past 31 years, shortly after he started working for the newspaper.

“He’s always been very helpful to me, whether we’ve been shooting games together or just hanging out talking about photography,” Newman said. “He’s very technically gifted, and he likes to help solve problems and figure out how to get the best shot.

“I’ve always enjoyed working with him, but more importantly I have always valued his friendship.”

During Jordan’s time on campus, advancing technology has dramatically changed how the job is done.

In the beginning his job was primarily to shoot and develop black-and-white photos to accompany news releases. He took on the task of shooting color for recruiting materials and other publications, and later helped convert the entire operation to digital when that technology replaced film.

He’s also experimented with underwater camera housings, special lenses, infrared film and camera drones to shoot campus scenes and activities.

“I’ve just tried to stay up with the technology and find new ways to capture Ole Miss,” he said. “I feel like I was in the right place at the right time to have a great career. I’ve had fun and most days, I feel like I’ve made a difference.”

Besides shooting assignments, Jordan supervises the department’s other photographers and helps maintain equipment and technology. He also puts those organizational skills to work for the University Photographers’ Association of America, serving on the organization’s board for the last 14 years.

“He’s the best,” said Glenn Carpenter, the association’s president. “He’s been a tremendous asset in helping organize events and programs, and being able to see things clearly and offer advice on how to make them run better.”

Jordan frequently has helped new members become oriented to the group, and also helps fellow members figure out the best way to get difficult shots, Carpenter said. He also has been honored many times for his creativity in the Nikon Shoot-Out, a competition sponsored at the group’s annual convention by the camera maker.

“In our group, Robert has won that contest more than anybody else,” Carpenter said. “He’s that good at taking somebody else’s idea and transforming it into a finished photo.”

Jordan can visualize how a photo will turn out even before shooting a single frame, Bain said.

“He’s one of the best, if not the best, photographers in the South,” he said. “He’s a wizard with light. I can set up lights and flashes to get a good shot, but Robert can always tweak it and make it better. That’s a big part of why his shots look so great.”

Around Oxford, many people know Jordan for this work with Nine Lives Cat Rescue and the Oxford-Lafayette Humane Society, where he photographs cats available for adoption. Jordan and his wife, Clarissa, have had cats in their home for more than a decade, so this work came naturally, he said.

“Some people are cat people, some people are dog people,” he explained. “I’m a cat person. I don’t dislike dogs; I just like cats better.”

Surprisingly, Jordan’s career almost took a far different path. In his hometown of Ocean Springs, he worked as a bank teller through a high school co-op program, so he initially enrolled at the University of South Alabama to major in banking and finance.

But his parents had gotten him a Canon AE-1 as a Christmas gift during his senior year in high school, and he later landed a job at the student newspaper at South Alabama.

“I had a horrible GPA because I was skipping all my business classes to shoot photos,” he recalled. He transferred to Ole Miss as a journalism major and quickly began winning accolades for his work in the department’s annual awards program.

Although he looks forward to spending more time with his wife, who retired seven years ago from the North Mississippi Regional Center, Jordan concedes that he’ll probably be a frequent visitor to campus, and notes that he’s available to help shoot Commencement and special projects.

“I’ll be available, but I’m leaving the office in the capable hands of two fine photographers,” Jordan said. “They’re doing a great job, and I’m going to enjoy watching their work.”

Alice Clark, vice chancellor for university relations, credits Jordan’s longtime leadership at the university for a seamless transition.

“In my 35 years at UM, I have had the privilege of sharing the years with Robert, working with him and watching him as he captured the heart and soul of Ole Miss,” she said. “His images and his talent have been instrumental in communicating to the world about the university’s role in transforming lives. The impact of his work will be felt for decades.”

Story by Mitchell Diggs, Ole Miss Communications. Special to HottyToddy.com

  For more questions or comments email us at hottytoddynews@gmail.com. 

The post Top Stories of 2017: Dean of Oxford Photographers Retires After 33 Years appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[creative-salem]

Salem Film Fest Turns 10! Come see the world

By Shelley A. Sackett

When local filmmaker Joe Cultrera, businessman Paul Van Ness and Salem Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Rinus Oosthoek gathered at the fledgling CinemaSalem café in 2007, they all shared a common goal: to create an event that would be fair to documentary filmmakers and attractive to audiences. They presented a week of special film programming and live events in the middle of that same winter. “That’s about as fast as a festival can be put together once you have a venue,” said Van Ness who owns CinemaSalem. “I suppose you could call it a spring training for the big league festival that would inaugurate the next year.”

The 2008 Salem Film Fest drew 1,743 filmgoers; in 2016, more than 6,000 attended what has grown to be both one New England’s largest and among the nation’s most respected all-documentary film festivals. Each March, the festival presents a rich and diverse collection of the year’s best work from all over the world that helps sustain cinephiles through the long, bleak slog of New England winter.

This year the festival runs from March 2-9 and will kick off its tenth anniversary with a Gala on Thursday, March 2 at the Hawthorne Hotel that will combine presentation of the inaugural SFF Storyteller Award to FRONTLINE founder David Fanning with a live music dance party. (Visit salemfilmfest.com/2017/gala-tickets for more information).

“Come to Salem, see the world” has been the Salem Film Fest catch phrase since its inception, both as an homage to old Salem merchant ships that established trade with the rest of the world and in tribute to the dozens of countries represented by the films the festival has screened over the past decade.

“Cheer Up” directed by Christy Garland

With a line-up of 35 feature and more than 20 short documentaries from more than 25 countries, SFF 2017 covers a lot of the globe: from the largest Syrian refugee camp in Jordan (“After Spring”) to Finland’s worst cheerleading team (“Cheer Up”); from the Mississippi Delta blues (“I Am the Blues”) to Mexico’s most famous tabloid photographer (“The Man Who Saw Too Much”); from Jalalabad’s child street gangs (“Snow Monkey”) to a New York City’s West Village artist community (“Winter at Westbeth”). And everyplace in between.

Besides CinemaSalem, SFF partners with the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) and the National Park Service Visitor Center (NPS) as additional venues. With simultaneous screenings at all three sites, the streets of Salem feel like a mini Sundance as filmgoers greet each other on the street, making their way from one film to the next.

As in past years, SFF 2017 focuses on filmmakers as much as their films, and more than 20 filmmakers and/or their subjects will attend this year’s post-screening Q&A sessions, which promise to be as exciting and informative as festivalgoers have come to expect. “It’s great to see the growth of the festival while we also stay true to our roots. More and more filmmakers have found the festival to be a haven of sorts for their films, and they enjoy spending time in Salem,” said Jeff Schmidt, who has been SFF program director for the past four festivals.

Cultrera, who handed the programming to Schmidt in 2013, agrees. “The thing I look forward to every year is getting a new crew of filmmakers to the festival: spending time interacting with them; introducing them to Salem; watching friendships build between them and some of our audience, and talking shop at after-hours gatherings,” he said.

“Zimbelism” Directed by Jean François Gratton and Matt Zimbel

Among this year’s line-up are four U.S. premieres: “The Day the Sun Fell” (surviving Red Cross doctors and nurses remember the day Hiroshima was bombed as nuclear disaster strikes Japan again); “Mattress Man” (an Irish 60-something-year-old creates a tacky YouTube persona to boost his failing business) and “Zimbelism” (one of the last working street photographers shares stories from his dark room). Both filmmaker Matt Zimbel and his subject and father, George S. Zimbel, will be present at the “Zimbelism” screening at PEM on Sunday, March 5 at 10:50 a.m.

“The Other Half of the Sky” (four powerhouse Chinese businesswomen create empires that break every Chinese glass ceiling) is a North American premiere. It screens at PEM on Saturday, March 4 at 6:10 p.m. and filmmaker Patrik Soergel be at the Q&A.

Schmidt began actively searching for films for this year’s festival last June, and the richly varied menu of documentaries has something to please every palette. To make planning easier, SFF offers a helpful guide that organizes the films into a number of “curated itineraries” (http://salemfilmfest.com/2017/itineraries/) to allow the audience to review films through specific lenses.

Three films that address complex socio-political issues through one person’s story are “Almost Sunrise”, Tickling Giants” and “Death by a Thousand Cuts”.

SFF alum (SFF’s 2012’s “Give up Tomorrow” director) Michael Collins’ is back with the Massachusetts premiere of “Almost Sunrise” which addresses “moral injury” by following two Iraq War veterans suffering from PTSD as they trek 2,700 miles in a last ditch effort to find the healing they both seek. Collins will attend the Q&A after the screening at PEM on Saturday, March 4 at 8:35 p.m.

In the New England premiere of “Tickling Giants” examines the aftermath of the Egyptian Arab Spring by showcasing Bassem Youssef, the “Egyptian Jon Stewart” who endangers his life and livelihood when the Morsi regime doesn’t appreciate his jokes. Filmmaker Moaz Elfarouk will be available for a post-screening Q&A. The film is at PEM on Friday, March 3 at 8:10 p.m.

“Death by a Thousand Cuts” directed by Jake Kheel and Juan Mejia

In the New England premiere of “Death by a Thousand Cuts”, a brutal murder on the Haiti-Dominican border exposes the complex consequences of killing the Dominican forests, one cut at a time. Filmmaker Juan Mejia will attend the Q&A after the screening at CinemaSalem on Sunday, March 5 at 5:10 p.m.

On the more whimsical side, The East Coast premiere of “The League of Exotique Dancers” introduces eight unforgettable Burlesque Hall of Fame inductees who share the good, the bad and the ugly about the golden age of stripping with bawdy good humor and moving insight in a film that is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. It screens at CinemaSalem on Saturday, March 4 at 9:40 p.m.

Those most interested in the arts have plenty to choose from this year. “The Ballad of Fred Hersch” traces the foremost jazz pianist and composer’s journey from AIDS coma survivor to musical triumph (Friday, March 3 at CinemaSalem at 5:10 p.m.). “Yarn” introduces edgy, contemporary women who are revolutionizing the art of knitting and crocheting. (Saturday, March 4 at PEM at 11:50 a.m.). “I Am the Blues” gives an up-close-and-personal tour of the original southern juke joints with the aging blues musicians who still play its “Chitlin’ Circuit”. (Closing night feature on Thursday, March 9 at CinemaSalem at 7:00 p.m.).

Every year, regular attendees look forward to the premiere of “Salem Sketches”, a series of two-minute documentaries based in Salem and created exclusively for SFF by local filmmakers and SFF Planning Committee members Cultrera and Perry Hallinan. “We’re one of the few festivals that can claim to have our own original programing,” Cultrera said with pride.

Photo by John Andrews

SFF 2017 is also jam-packed with events, parties and the live music performances before many of the screenings at CinemaSalem by local musicians whose contributions add to the festival’s literal good vibrations.

While the community-driven, all-volunteer festival steadfastly remains true to its ideals of high-level programming and treating filmmakers like the stars they are, the “little festival that could” seems poised for even wider appeal and reach in its second decade. All agree that fundraising and broadening the volunteer base are two critical ingredients for generating this growth.

“The festival is special, but it could be on another level entirely if we had the resources and if there was a mechanism in place in Salem that better-synchronized public, private and non-profit energies,” said Cultrera.

Nonetheless, the wildly popular and highly anticipated festival draws sell-out crowds to one of the liveliest and friendliest of Salem’s many festivities. Patrons return year after year and hugging reunions in the CinemaSalem lobby are commonplace. Clearly, Salem Film Fest is about more than films. It’s also about community.

“Come to Salem, see the world. Come to Salem, meet the world,” Oosthoek said with a smile.

Salem Film Fest runs March 2-9 with screenings at CinemaSalem, the Peabody Essex Museum and National Park Service Visitors Center. For more information or to purchase tickets or passes, go to the CinemaSalem box office or visit salemfilmfest.com.

Creative Salem is proud to sponsor two films this year and will once again provide media coverage for the festival. We would love if you joined us for I AM THE BLUES and LEAGUE OF EXOTIC DANCERS…..Members stay tuned for free ticket giveaways!

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After 33 years of shooting photographs for the university, Robert Jordan is looking forward to a slower pace. Photo by Kevin Bain/Ole Miss Communications

For more than three decades, Robert Jordan has profoundly shaped how the world perceives the University of Mississippi. His photographs have documented the natural beauty of the Oxford campus through all seasons, captured critical moments of thrilling athletic triumphs and conveyed the dedication and achievements of its faculty, staff, students and alumni.

But after shooting more than a million photos, Jordan, director of university photography, is looking forward to a slower pace. He’s retiring at the end of the fall semester and already has a few goals for the coming months.

“I’m looking forward to sleeping late, playing some golf, reading some books and spending time with my wife,” he said. “I’ll always have that itch, and I’ll be taking photographs as long as I’m able, but it will be for fun, not how I make my living.”

University Communications is hosting a retirement reception for Jordan from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday (Nov. 29) in the Farrington Gallery of Bryant Hall. The event is open to the public.

Jordan’s work played a critical role in the university’s rise as a respected public university, Chancellor Emeritus Robert Khayat said.

“I knew at the outset in ’95 that Robert would be a key player in what we were doing here at Ole Miss,” Khayat said. “I knew we had a beautiful campus, attractive people and gorgeous trees and buildings and spaces, and we just needed to show everybody.

“Robert is a gifted artist. He could make that camera talk. He is quiet, unobtrusive, humble, kind and patient. He would take the time to shoot an assignment over and over until he got exactly what we needed, and he made remarkable contributions to the university that will be treasured and studied forever.”

In a field where people frequently change jobs, Jordan has spent virtually his entire professional career at Ole Miss. He graduated in December 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and got a job in Greenville as a photographer at the Delta Democrat-Times.

“Newspaper work is exciting, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my degree,” he recalled.

So barely four months later, when somebody from the UM Department of Public Relations called with the news that Jack Cofield was retiring as university photographer, Jordan jumped at the opportunity to return to his alma mater.

“The thing that’s so cool about being a university photographer is that you never know from one day to the next what you’re going to be doing,” he said. “You may be shooting an event for the chancellor’s office one day and then going into a lab to photograph some researcher’s work the next. And then you may shoot outstanding students right after that.

“The challenge every day is to see the campus with new eyes and see something you’ve never seen before. I still get excited when I see something new.”

Over his 33 years on campus, Jordan has shot an estimated 10,000 assignments and mentored dozens of rising young photographers. Among them are Kevin Bain, who has worked as one of the university’s photographers for 18 years, and Thomas Graning, the department’s newest photographer.

Bain began working for the old Imaging Services Department as a student, answering phones and helping customers with orders.

“That was back in the film days, and if he saw I didn’t have much to do, he was cool about saying, ‘Here’s a roll of film. Go out and see what you can do,'” Bain said. “I was an English major, and he was really good about showing me how to get different kinds of shots.”

Jordan also befriended Bruce Newman, photographer at the Oxford Eagle for the past 31 years, shortly after he started working for the newspaper.

“He’s always been very helpful to me, whether we’ve been shooting games together or just hanging out talking about photography,” Newman said. “He’s very technically gifted, and he likes to help solve problems and figure out how to get the best shot.

“I’ve always enjoyed working with him, but more importantly I have always valued his friendship.”

During Jordan’s time on campus, advancing technology has dramatically changed how the job is done.

In the beginning his job was primarily to shoot and develop black-and-white photos to accompany news releases. He took on the task of shooting color for recruiting materials and other publications, and later helped convert the entire operation to digital when that technology replaced film.

He’s also experimented with underwater camera housings, special lenses, infrared film and camera drones to shoot campus scenes and activities.

“I’ve just tried to stay up with the technology and find new ways to capture Ole Miss,” he said. “I feel like I was in the right place at the right time to have a great career. I’ve had fun and most days, I feel like I’ve made a difference.”

Besides shooting assignments, Jordan supervises the department’s other photographers and helps maintain equipment and technology. He also puts those organizational skills to work for the University Photographers’ Association of America, serving on the organization’s board for the last 14 years.

“He’s the best,” said Glenn Carpenter, the association’s president. “He’s been a tremendous asset in helping organize events and programs, and being able to see things clearly and offer advice on how to make them run better.”

Jordan frequently has helped new members become oriented to the group, and also helps fellow members figure out the best way to get difficult shots, Carpenter said. He also has been honored many times for his creativity in the Nikon Shoot-Out, a competition sponsored at the group’s annual convention by the camera maker.

“In our group, Robert has won that contest more than anybody else,” Carpenter said. “He’s that good at taking somebody else’s idea and transforming it into a finished photo.”

Jordan can visualize how a photo will turn out even before shooting a single frame, Bain said.

“He’s one of the best, if not the best, photographers in the South,” he said. “He’s a wizard with light. I can set up lights and flashes to get a good shot, but Robert can always tweak it and make it better. That’s a big part of why his shots look so great.”

Around Oxford, many people know Jordan for this work with Nine Lives Cat Rescue and the Oxford-Lafayette Humane Society, where he photographs cats available for adoption. Jordan and his wife, Clarissa, have had cats in their home for more than a decade, so this work came naturally, he said.

“Some people are cat people, some people are dog people,” he explained. “I’m a cat person. I don’t dislike dogs; I just like cats better.”

Surprisingly, Jordan’s career almost took a far different path. In his hometown of Ocean Springs, he worked as a bank teller through a high school co-op program, so he initially enrolled at the University of South Alabama to major in banking and finance.

But his parents had gotten him a Canon AE-1 as a Christmas gift during his senior year in high school, and he later landed a job at the student newspaper at South Alabama.

“I had a horrible GPA because I was skipping all my business classes to shoot photos,” he recalled. He transferred to Ole Miss as a journalism major and quickly began winning accolades for his work in the department’s annual awards program.

Although he looks forward to spending more time with his wife, who retired seven years ago from the North Mississippi Regional Center, Jordan concedes that he’ll probably be a frequent visitor to campus, and notes that he’s available to help shoot Commencement and special projects.

“I’ll be available, but I’m leaving the office in the capable hands of two fine photographers,” Jordan said. “They’re doing a great job, and I’m going to enjoy watching their work.”

Alice Clark, vice chancellor for university relations, credits Jordan’s longtime leadership at the university for a seamless transition.

“In my 35 years at UM, I have had the privilege of sharing the years with Robert, working with him and watching him as he captured the heart and soul of Ole Miss,” she said. “His images and his talent have been instrumental in communicating to the world about the university’s role in transforming lives. The impact of his work will be felt for decades.”

By Mitchell Diggs

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