An Evening with Pablo Frasconi

Since 1969, Pablo Frasconi has made films about the U.S. bicentennial, gentrification, childhood literacy, public art, creativity, civil liberties and poetry, including, Towards the Memory of a Revolution (’76, 53m), The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi (’87, 25m), Survival of a Small City (’86, 57m), broadcast nationally on PBS, and, The Longing (‘08,15m). They have screened world- wide. He has received many grants. He is currently Professor of Practice in the Production Division at the School of Cinematic Arts at USC where he teaches Editing; Creating Poetic Cinema; Nature, Design and Media (in the new Media Arts + Practice Division); The Global Exchange Workshop at the Communication University of China in Beijing & USC; mentors advanced graduate projects, and coordinates the first year of the graduate M.F.A. production program. He recently designed and taught the USC-YouTube Creator Institute; a workshop at the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching on Contemplative Pedagogies; and a seminar in Transmedia and Political Engagement.

FILMS at 8:30pm (followed by Q and A with Pablo) THE LIGHT AT WALDEN (’14, 39m) is a meditation shot at Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, interweaving pieces of Henry David Thoreau’s texts and a war resister’s personal journey on a wilderness island in Canada. The filmmaker, as a young man during the U.S. / Vietnam War, attempts to follow Thoreau’s principles: building a cabin and living sustainably in the woods, “to front only the essential facts of life.” This is one story among the nearly 125,000 war resisters in Canada. Music composed by John Luther Adams, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Charles Ives, Arvo Part, Karen Tanaka and others.

With two shorts by Frasconi: THE SONG OF THE SOUL (’99, 6m), an adaptation of Walt Whitman’s Children of Adam: From Pent-up Aching Rivers, and, LOOK OUT (’06, 8m), an adaptation of Wendell Berry’s poem.
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