Films
- Looking for an Icon (2007)
Tuesday, September 16, 7 pm
Ezra and Cecile
Zilkha Gallery
Free and open to the public - Why We Fight: War Comes to America (1945)
Tuesday, November 18, 7 pm
Powell Family Screening Room,
Center for film studies
Free and open to the public
Looking for an Icon (2007)
A film by Hans Pool and Maaik Krijgsman
Tuesday, September 16, 7 pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
Introduction by Nina Felshin, Curator of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, and Jennifer Tucker, Associate Professor of History, Wesleyan University. Free and open to the public.
Looking for an Icon examines the process by which photos become icons, revealing that once a photo is published, social forces are at work beyond the photographer's control. The film focuses on four World Press Photo winners, including Eddie Adams's 1968 photo of the public execution of a Viet Cong prisoner, an anonymous photographer's last image of Salvador Allende during the 1973 coup, Charlie Cole's 1989 photo of a lone student confronting tanks in Tiananmen Square, and David Turnley's 1991 photo of a grieving soldier during the first Gulf War.
The film details the story behind each of those world-famous images, featuring interviews with the photographers, and showing additional images from the contact sheets. Looking for an Icon also features interviews with other photographers, photo editors, critics, educators, historians and members of the World Press Photo jury. The commentary by these photojournalists and other professionals offers insights into the social process by which a photo becomes iconic, the visual motifs they illustrate, the public's voyeuristic fascination with horrific images, and how such images shape historical memory.
- 2008 Best Educational Film Award, International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) Montreal
- 2007 DocPoint Film Festival
- 2005 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam