- Conference on World Affairs
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The Conference on World Affairs is hosted annually, around the second week of April, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.
Contents
History
The Conference was founded in 1948 by Howard Higman,[1] a professor of Sociology at the University. He ran the conference until he retired, shortly before his death in 1995.[2] The Conference resumed in 1996, and is currently directed by Professor James Palmer.[3][4]
Content and panelists
The conference started out as a forum on international affairs, but, under Higman, morphed into a discussion on a multitude of topics. The core of the conference consists of panel discussions, usually with 3-6 panelists, on topics such as music, art, literature, environmental activism, business, science, journalism, diplomacy, technology, spirituality, the film industry, pop culture, visual arts, politics, medicine, and human rights. Half of a panel typically consists of experts on that panel's subject, and half with people having no professional connection to the topic, who could fresh insights. Only a one-line topic for the panel is announced two or three weeks before the conference. The panelists are given no other direction or guidance about what they should say.
Each year the conference hosts over 100 panelists, and conducts over 200 sessions. The panels are free and open to the public (except for a $1 service fee for ticketing of the jazz concert due to overflow demand) and are held in rooms varying in capacity according to anticipated popularity, from 50 seats to 2000. The total annual attendance of all the events at the 62st Conference on World Affairs (in April, 2010) was estimated to be over 92,000.[5] Numerous distinguished people have served as panelists over the years, including Patch Adams, Betty Dodson, Buckminster Fuller, Adam Hochschild, Arianna Huffington, Molly Ivins, Henry Kissinger, Paul Krugman, George McGovern, Ralph Nader, Yitzhak Rabin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Studs Terkel, and Ted Turner.[6]
Panelists travel to the conference at their own expense, and are paid no fees for coming. They are housed as guests in the homes of Boulder residents who volunteer to take them in. In addition to the panels, there is a keynote plenary address kicking off the conference on Monday at 11:30 a.m. and a Tuesday evening jazz concert.
Cinema Interruptus
The most popular event of the conference is the Cinema Interruptus, hosted for many years by film critic Roger Ebert. Ebert selected one movie and showed it late afternoon at the beginning of the week, in a normal, uninterrupted way. Then, for a total of 8 hours spread over the following four afternoons, the movie was dissected almost on a frame-by-frame basis. Ebert, or anybody else in the audience, could pause the movie at any point, and comment about any aspect: plot points, acting or directing techniques, camera movement, frame composition, etc.
Roger Ebert moderated Cinema Interruptus from 1969-2006. In 2008, he shared an explanation on the program's beginnings:
"This all began for me in about 1969, when I started teaching a film class in the University of Chicago's Fine Arts program. I knew a Chicago film critic, teacher and booker named John West, who lived in a wondrous apartment filled with film prints, projectors, books, posters and stills. "You know how football coaches use a stop-action 16mm projector to study game films?" he asked me. "You can use that approach to study films. Just pause the film and think about what you see. You ought to try it with your film class."
I did. The results were beyond my imagination. I wasn't the teacher and my students weren't the audience, we were all in this together. The ground rules: Anybody could call out "stop!" and discuss what we were looking at, or whatever had just occurred to them. A couple of years later, when I started doing shot-by-shots at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the conference founder, Howard Higman, described this process as "democracy in the dark." Later he gave it a name: Cinema Interruptus. Perhaps it sounds grueling, but in fact it can be exciting and almost hypnotic. At Boulder for more than 30 years, I made my way through a film for two hours every afternoon for a week, and the sessions had to be moved to an auditorium to accommodate attendance that approached a thousand."[7]
While Ebert was recovering from cancer surgeries in 2007 and 2008, RogerEbert.com founding editor and CWA participant, Jim Emerson, stepped in to moderate during his absence. Ebert returned for 2009 and 2010, but mainly as a contributor, using his computer as his voice in order to participate.[8] In 2011, Ebert announced that he would not be returning, and Emerson would carry on as moderator.[9]
The Cinema Interruptus film-viewing process started in 1975 and continues to the present.[10][11]
Year Movie When Where Series Title Notes 1975 Citizen Kane Mon-Fri Boulder's Fox Theater Persona 1976 Notorious Mon-Fri, 4pm Fox Theater How to Read A Movie first Uninterruptus/Interruptus 1977 The Third Man Mon-Fri, 12pm University of Colorado's
Memorial ForumDecoding a Movie 1978 8 1/2 Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Analyzing a Film 1979 La Dolce Vita Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Analyzing a Film first of plan to study La Dolce Vita at least once every decade 1980 Amarcord Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Analyzing a Film 1981 Cries and Whispers Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Films 1982 Taxi Driver Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Analyzing a Film 1983 La Dolce Vita Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Analyzing a Film second of every decade study 1984 Day 2: God's Angry Man &
Huie's Sermon
Day 3: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Day 4: My Dinner with Andre
Day 5: Gates of Heaven &
Werner Herzog Eats His ShoeTues-Fri, 12pm University of Colorado's
Fiske PlanetariumFilm(s) Ebert did not arrive until Tuesday (Day 2) 1985 Casablanca Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Film 1986 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Mon-Fri, 12pm Memorial Forum Film 1987 Three Women Mon-Fri, 12pm University of Colorado's
Macky AuditoriumAnalyzing A Film 1988 The Third Man Mon-Fri, 12pm Macky Auditorium Analyzing A Film 1989 Out of the Past Mon-Fri, 12pm Macky Auditorium Film 1990 Raging Bull Mon-Fri, 12pm Macky Auditorium Film 1991 Citizen Kane Mon-Fri, 12pm Macky Auditorium Analyzing A Film 1992 Silence of the Lambs Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium Film 1993 JFK Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium Analyzing A Film 1994 La Dolce Vita Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium Analyzing A Film third of every decade study 1995 no CWA this year 1996 Pulp Fiction Mon-Fri, 7pm University of Colorado's
Muenzinger Auditoriumseries titles stopped being used 1997 Fargo Mon-Fri, 7pm Macky Auditorium 1998 Dark City Mon-Fri, 7pm Macky Auditorium film selection changed after the CWA program went to press -
the program says Vertigo1999 Vertigo Mon-Fri, 7pm Macky Auditorium 2000 Casablanca Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium 2001 Fight Club Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium 2002 Mulholland Drive Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium 2003 Floating Weeds Sun; Tues-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium Uninterruptus was on Sunday
on Monday, the movie Tokyo-Ga was shown at 4pm2004 The Rules of the Game Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium 2005 La Dolce Vita Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium fourth of every decade study 2006 The Long Goodbye Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium 2007 Chinatown Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium Jim Emerson moderated the discussion 2008 No Country for Old Men Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium Jim Emerson moderated the discussion 2009 Chop Shop Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium with guest director, Ramin Bahrani 2010 Aguirre, the Wrath of God Sun; Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium with guest director, Werner Herzog
Uninterruptus was on Sunday2011 A Serious Man Mon-Fri, 4pm Macky Auditorium Jim Emerson made official moderator References
- ^ "http://howardhigman.com/"
- ^ "http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/us/howard-higman-academic-impresario-dies-at-80.html?src=pm"
- ^ "http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/c580ce8b87d1d77416db2fe4720c3321.html"
- ^ Higman, Howard. "Higman: A Collection", edited by Tom Adams and Betty Brandenburg. Foreword by Roger Ebert. Copr. 1998 Thomas Berryhill Press. ISBN 0-9648638-5-5.
- ^ "http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_17271639"
- ^ Annual Conference on World Affairs - Information
- ^ "http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/08/how_to_read_a_movie.html"
- ^ "http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_12955793?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com"
- ^ "http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_17351442?source=rss"
- ^ "http://www.colorado.edu/cwa/archives
- ^ "http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/04/greetings_from_boulder.html"
External links
Categories:- University of Colorado at Boulder
- Culture of Boulder, Colorado
- International conferences in the United States
- Recurring events established in 1948
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