Dr. Pat Aufderheide, a fellow Minnesotan who promotes Appalshop and Les Blank
Pat Aufderheide began her career in film at the same place and in the same time as I did - The University of Minnesota in the late 60s and early 70s. She became a film critic for The Minnesota Daily. ( Some of her columns from that period were compiled into a book published by The University of Minnesota Press called “The Daily Planet - A Critic on the Capitalist Culture Beat.”) On a weekly basis for several years I had to screen films for her to review for the largest campus newspaper in the country. Since then she has received her Ph.D. in Latin American studies; I continued showing the world’s most interesting films until I came to WV in fall 1978.
Since then she became a writer and senior editor for In These Times and a professor at American University in Washington, DC. She is also the director of the Center for Social Media, School of Communication. She has been quoted on Appalshop’s website, and promoted the films of Les Blank - two things I have also done, both as a exhibitor and as a film reviewer. ( She has an article in the book about “Burden of Dreams,” Blank’s British Oscar winning film.)
Last year she received the International Documentary Association’s award for scholarship. She recently told me that she has a new book coming out on the documentary film.
Congrats to someone else from the Minnesota media world…..she is one of many along with Gary (Garrison) Keillor who began their amazing careers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis….back in the Activist Years…the founder of the NYU film school was also from the U. of M., George Amberg. I was the TA for Amberg’s TA, Al Milgrom, still running the U. Film Society, now called the Minnesota Film Arts. Hopefully I can arrange for a visit sometime soon.
Here is one of many quotes from Dr. A. on Appalshop over the last 30 years -
“Appalshop’s work has been a cultural beacon, for the people of the
Appalachian region, for independent filmmakers, for media arts leaders, and
also for people who, like me, celebrate and study the role of independent
media in a democratic society,” stated Pat Aufderheide, Director of the
Center for Social Media at American University’s School of Communications
and a film critic who has followed Appalshop’s development.
See the great website for the two films on the Disaster from Appalshop -http://www.appalshop.org/buffalo/index2.html
