(February 25, 2011)

Contact: Rick DelaHaya, Centenary News Services, 318.869.5073

Attaway Scholars bring documentary films, lectures to Centenary

SHREVEPORT, La. (Centenary News Service) — Centenary College will host public presentations by filmmakers, writers and professors Dr. Elizabeth Coffman and Ted Hardin, who will be visiting the campus as Attaway Scholars March 30 through April 1.

Hardin and Coffman are the co-founders of Long Distance Productions, a media company dedicated to bridging the distances between people, cultures, and traditions. In 2002 they produced One More Mile: a Dialogue on Nation-Building, a feature film that screened in festivals and universities around the world and was broadcast in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They are currently co-producing Veins in the Gulf, a documentary based in southern Louisiana on the disappearance of Cajun culture, poetry, and the wetlands.

During their three-day visit they will present these two documentary films at separate film screenings, and visit with students on campus in classes such as documentary film, environmental studies, sociology and political science.

Public presentations and screenings include:

Wednesday, March 30, 7 p.m., Whited Room in Bynum Commons
Screening, One More Mile: a Dialogue on Nation-Building
Free and open to the public

What happens when the bombs stop falling from the sky? How does a country heal itself after the devastation of genocide? What role does the world play in nation-building in countries such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and now Iraq? One More Mile: a Dialogue on Nation-Building investigates the delicate and controversial role of the international community in a post-war society.

One More Mile centers on a series of interviews with individuals (from high-ranking international officials to Bosnian students, artists and workers) who recount their experiences in all phases of the recovery process - media, economy, education, law, the arts, and the more abstract healing of the soul. This feature-length documentary offers a glimpse into the personal and professional complexities of a massive, multinational reconstruction venture.

Thursday, March 31, 11 a.m., Whited Room in Bynum Commons
Convocation: The Making of Veins in the Gulf

7 p.m., Whited Room in Bynum Commons
Screening, Veins in the Gulf
Free and open to the public

Veins in the Gulf is a documentary that traces the history of rapidly disappearing bayous, the environmental crisis of southern Louisiana, and the international impact of Cajun culture, which is quickly losing ground. Through interviews with fishermen, engineers, poets, and scientists, we bear witness as Louisiana residents confront the mortality of their culture and a community tries to solve its environmental crises. Poet Martha Serpas guides us through the heart of Southern culture to discover where great American literature, music, seafood and oil have come from for the past century.

Coffman
Elizabeth Coffman

Elizabeth Coffman, Ph.D., is an associate professor, and Program Director International Film and Media Studies program at Loyola University Chicago. She is an active documentary filmmaker and film scholar. She has worked at Loyola University Chicago since 2004, serving first as department chair for Communication. In 2004 she helped to found Loyola's Center for Global Media and Documentary Studies.

In the field of cinema studies Dr. Coffman has published on the history of early avant-garde cinema and body movement, as well as contemporary video practices surrounding violence and new media. Most recently, she published "Documentary and Collaboration: Placing the Camera in the Community" for the Journal of Film and Video. She writes a bi-monthly column, "Long Distance Mom" for the blog "Mama, Ph.D." with Inside Higher Ed.

Ted Hardin
Ted Hardin

Ted Hardin is an associate professor at Columbia College in Chicago. After receiving his M.A. from Florida State University in German Film Studies and an M.F.A. from the Ohio State University in Film and Video, he worked with a variety of artists at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada as director of photography, director, editor, lighting director, and assistant director.

Hardin has collaborated with the alternative media collective Paper Tiger Television in New York, and researched and shot the documentary, Dark Near-Death Experiences for German Television. Hardin's own experimental narratives and movement-based films have shown at festivals and galleries throughout the U.S. and Europe. For the last decade, he has been collaborating with his partner Elizabeth Coffman on experimental shorts and documentaries.

Funded by and named for the Douglas and Marion Attaway, the Attaway Professorships in Civic Culture, Attaway Fellows and Attaway Scholars designations are awarded by Centenary to intellectuals who have made notable contributions to the public discussion of ideas. They present themselves not as academics who occasionally have public roles, but as public thinkers and gifted communicators whose foremost interest is civic culture.


About Centenary College of Louisiana

Centenary College is a private, four-year arts and sciences college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Founded in 1825, it is the oldest chartered liberal arts college west of the Mississippi River and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Centenary is one of 16 colleges and universities constituting the Associated Colleges of the South and has been recognized as "One of the Best 373 Colleges" by the Princeton Review and one of "America's Best Colleges" and one of "America's Best Private Colleges" by Forbes.com. In 2008 Centenary College celebrated 100 years in Shreveport and Bossier City.