Daily Beacon: UT commemorates Agee’s anniversary

[silentfilm]

http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle. ... leid=55834

UT commemorates Agee’s anniversary
Katharine Heriges - Art and Entertainment Editor
Monday, November 02, 2009 issue


Before Peyton Manning, the city of Knoxville had another favorite son.

He was many things: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, screenwriter, film critic and journalist. He was also a proud Southerner and a not-so-proud alcoholic. He was writer James Agee, and this year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.

To commemorate the occasion, the UT College of Arts and Sciences, the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, the Knox County Public Library, the John C. Hodges Better English Fund and the Haines-Morris Endowment have teamed to create the James Agee Centennial Celebration.

The event kicked off on Oct. 23 with the weekend-long James Agee Film Festival.

“One of the ways in which people get to know Agee is through his most public performances, and film is obviously one of them,” Michael Lofaro, professor of English and teacher of the English 482 class about Agee’s work, said. “Although, it’s not one of the ones that people know a lot about.”

Lofaro took part in organizing the Agee Celebration and has also edited a version of Agee’s autobiographical novel, “A Death in the Family,” based on Agee’s uncovered original manuscripts.

“He was a screenwriter,” Lofaro said. “That’s what he was moving towards in terms of his public career.”

Lofaro explained that there was a notable progression in Agee’s work towards film.

“If you start with ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’ (Agee’s 1941 novel) and his fascination with photography and Walker Evans, and then the next step he starts reviewing films after that’s published,” Lofaro said. “He establishes the idea of film criticism as a literary art. And then moves to writing films.”

Part of the film festival involved a screening of “The Night of the Hunter,” the 1955 horror film that Agee wrote.

Another part was a lecture about Agee’s relationship with legendary filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was a hero of Agee’s, and eventually the two men became friends.

John Wranovics was the lecturer at this event. Wranovics said he first became interested in the connection between the two men when he came across a reference to Agee’s handwritten treatment of a film intended for Chaplin.

“It described the (iconic Chaplin character) Little Tramp as the sole survivor of an atomic attack on New York,” Wranovics said. “He felt the world needed to see this.”

Wranovics said that Agee was drawn to Chaplin, and to film in general, from his early childhood.

“Agee lost his father when he was young, and one of the strongest memories of the time he spent with his dad and one of the things that they shared was enjoyment of Chaplin’s silent films,” Wranovics said.

The rest of the semester holds two more weekends in store for Agee fans and scholars.

“On the 14th and 15th of November, we have another really interesting conjuncture of events,” Lofaro explained. “Dwight Garner, who was for 10 years the book review editor of the New York Times, is the authorized biographer of Agee. He’s coming down Saturday night and is going to give a talk at McClung Museum.”

“And then on Sunday, Jeff Rosenheim, who is the curator of the Walker Evans collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is coming down to give a presentation on Walker Evans’ collaboration with Agee on ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,’” he said.

Later in the afternoon on the 15th, “we move to the LMU Law School, or in Agee’s time, the deaf-and-dumb asylum, and we’ll be talking about the connection between Agee and Lincoln,” Lofaro said. “Agee was a great lover of Lincoln, as was Agee’s father. Not many people know it, but Agee wrote the first television mini-series of Lincoln.”

The last event, called “One Last Weekend with Jim,” takes place on Nov. 20 through Nov. 22 and will feature an Agee tribute concert, as well as a talk by Lofaro as a part of the Pre-Game Faculty Showcase at the University Center before the the Vanderbilt game.

[Ian Elliot]

Yesterday in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec ... -criticism