NewsRelease

Former UNCG Professor Returns for Screenings, April 3
Films give glimpse into challenges of fatherhood, life in High Point during the volatile '60s
 

Ron Taylor will address issues related to parenting a child with disabilities in his documentary "Meet Micah" April 3.

GREENSBORO — Audiences will have the opportunity to look inside the life of a documentary filmmaker who has captured war protests, the struggles of the disabled, and life in the Triad during the 1960s. These topics and more will be presented during an evening of film screenings titled, “Xperimental to Parental: Twenty-Five Years of a Filmmaker’s Changes—in Life, Love and Work.”

Filmmaker Ron Taylor, who taught filmmaking at UNCG in 1969, before there was a Department of Broadcasting and Cinema, will return to campus Thursday, April 3. Screenings will be held in the Cone Building Auditorium at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public

“So many changes have occurred both in my life and in the genre of film/video documentaries since I taught film and photography in the Art Department at UNCG,” Taylor said. “It was during the Vietnam War and I was able to capture vivid memories on army surplus 16 mm Kodachrome film of that year in Greensboro: movies of my family in my birth town High Point, adventures with hippy friends from Pennland to Nag’s Head, recordings of anti-war protesters and Jane Fonda’s provocative speech at the Fort Bragg demonstration.”

The event will include the North Carolina premiere of Taylor’s Suckalo, a collage/montage film of growing up in High Point in the 1960s. From 1968 to 1976, Taylor gathered more than 80 hours of footage for the autobiographical film.

“Suckalo defined my personal vision as a documentary film artist and captured what I call the psychedelic memory of growing up in the ’60s south,” Taylor said.  “I know that political and personal themes will always be hot issues for contemporary university audiences, and I gladly address these at film, video and writing classes accompanying my showings.”

Suckalo premiered at the Chicago Film Festival in 1976 and was given a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in March 1977. Additionally, it was shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in Scotland and the Deauville Film Festival in France, as well as appearing domestically in Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, Atlanta and Baltimore.

The film also received positive critical acclaim.

“A tremendously complex work….The experience is like being immersed in the scrapbooks of Taylor’s subconscious, as images and events from his life whirl about each other. Taylor wants to inundate us with his material, to absorb us in his editing rhythm. The film ultimately has a hypnotic effect.”    — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, Nov. 9, 1976

One of the events that most influenced Taylor’s artistic expression, however, was the birth of his youngest son Micah, who developed cerebral palsy before his first birthday. Taylor wrote a book called “All by Self” in 1991 that relates his experiences parenting a special needs child. The book was used by the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado. Taylor has become an advocate for inclusion of ‘differently abled’ children, writing educational books and producing videos. He also produced a documentary titled “Meet Micah: The Flowering of a Child with Disabilities,” which will also be shown among others during the two-hour screening.

Taylor studied poetry with Jim Applewhite at Duke and film and writing in Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1967 and a master’s of science degree in photography/cinema in 1968, both from the Illinois Institute of Technology. For five years, he taught film at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and he spent 20 years in Boulder, CO, working professionally on documentaries.

For more information, visit the Department of Broadcasting and Cinema at www.uncg.edu/bcn or call (336) 334-5360.

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