By Tiffany Edwards , University Relations
One of North Carolina’s “most distinguished media awards” will be awarded for 2006 to documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee. A native North Carolinian, McElwee is well known for “Sherman’s March,” a documentary about his search for love in the South.
The North Carolina Distinguished Filmmaker award is presented each year to a person who has an exceptional individual achievement or a career profile of excellence in filmmaking in North Carolina or featuring North Carolina subjects and/or locales. Candidates are nominated by heads of academic programs and by CEOs of film-related institutions and companies. The Broadcasting and Cinema Advisory Committee at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro makes the final selection.
The 2006 award will be presented to McElwee at the Winners’ Night of the 29th Annual Carolina Film and Video Festival Feb. 25 at the Carousel Theatre in downtown Greensboro. Lee Kinard, chair of the Broadcasting and Cinema Advisory Committee, will present the award. Previous winners of the North Carolina Distinguished Filmmaker Award have included Earl Owensby, Jacob (Jake) H. Froelich, Jr., Frank Capra, Jr., and Pat Hingle.
In the weeks leading up to the award ceremony, local audiences will have the chance to see McElwee’s films and meet the filmmaker personally. On Wednesday, Feb. 8, the UNCG Department of Broadcasting and Cinema will present “Sherman’s March” and on Wednesday, Feb. 15, it will screen “Six O’Clock News.” Both films will be shown at 5 p.m. in Room 355 of the Science Building.
McElwee’s most recent work, “Bright Leaves,” will be screened Friday, Feb. 24, at 8:30 p.m. in the Elliott University Center Auditorium, after which the filmmaker will be available for a question-and-answer session. Central to the film is McElwee’s exploration of the legacy of his great-grandfather, John Harvey McElwee, a tobacco baron and creator of the “Bull Durham” brand, and the role of tobacco in the psyche of North Carolina and its inhabitants.
Biography
A native North Carolinian, Ross McElwee began his career as a studio cameraman in local television in Charlotte. His education took him north to Brown University and to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His master’s degree at MIT brought him under the influence of Richard Leacock, a leading auteur of the documentary film movement and a living connection to Robert Flaherty and the fathers of documentary. McElwee’s education was further enhanced by freelance cinematography for other stalwarts of the documentary tradition, John Marshall and D. A. Pennebaker.
While still a student at MIT, McElwee began filming incidents (he calls them “chapters”) from his life and his circle of his friends and acquaintances. From these episodes, he distilled short autobiographical and later feature films. He burst to international attention in 1986 with “Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,” which was named Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. “Sherman’s March” -- rich with humor, quirky characters, and considerable self-reflective insight into the meaning of life and image --quickly established McElwee as the leading exponent of the personal documentary. His unique and charismatic voice has continued an epic odyssey through highly acclaimed sequels to “Sherman’s March,” including “Time Indefinite,” “Six O’Clock News,” and now “Bright Leaves.”
McElwee is a professor in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.
