Series to feature award-winning filmmaker
The University of Maine at Presque Isle will present Byron Hurt, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, published writer, and anti-sexist activist, as the next speaker in the 2014-15 Distinguished Lecturer Series. His talk will focus on his most popular documentary, “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and has been broadcast on the PBS series “Independent Lens”.
Hurt’s talk, which also serves as the keynote address for UMPI’s 14th annual University Day, will take place on Tuesday, April 14, at 7 p.m. in the Campus Center. This event is free and the public is invited to be a part of this special evening.
Hurt is the former host of the Emmy-nominated television series, “Reel Works with Byron Hurt” and The Independent named him one of the “Top 10 Filmmakers to Watch” in 2011. He has been featured by The New York Times, “O Magazine”, NPR, CNN, “Access Hollywood”, MTV, “ABC World News Tonight”, BET, “Mother Jones”, and AllHipHop.com.
The theme of this year’s University Day is “Transformers: Students Changing the World”, which is based on the 2014-15 Distinguished Lecturer Series theme “Transformers: People Who Are Changing the World”. Since 1993, Hurt has been using his craft, voice and writings to broaden and deepen how people think about gender, race, sex, violence, music and visual media. As an activist, Hurt has served as a long-time gender violence prevention educator. The former Northeastern University football quarterback was also a founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for college and professional athletics. Hurt has also served as an associate director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps.
Hurt first began his film career with “I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America”, a 60-minute award-winning documentary that captures the thoughts and feelings of African-American men and women from over 15 cities across the country. He followed up with his documentary “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” (BBR) in 2006. BBR focuses on issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture. It also explores such pressing issues as women and violence in rap music.
Since then, BBR has screened at over 100 film festivals worldwide.
For more information, call the University’s Community and Media Relations Office at 768-9452 or email info@umpi.edu.
