Visual Arts Residency
Speaker: Elisabeth Haviland James, Documentary Filmmaker
- Springfield City School District鈥檚 John Legend Theater, 700 S. Limestone Street
- Feb. 5, 7:30 p.m., Screening of Althea, followed by discussion with filmmaker
- Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m., Screening of The Loving Story, followed by discussion with filmmaker
- All Wittenberg Series events are admission-free. Doors open 30 minutes prior to the beginning of each lecture or performance.
Elisabeth Haviland James is a film producer, director and editor based in Durham, N.C., where her company, Thornapple Films, is headquartered. In 2014, she launched The Falconbridge Collection LLC with her spouse and partner Revere La Noue, to house their new documentary project, Overland, about falconers around the world and the stories that connect across borders.
In 2015, James was named one of two film fellows in the state by the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the producer and editor of Althea, a feature documentary about pioneering tennis icon Althea Gibson, which was the season opener for PBS鈥� prestigious American Masters series in September 2015. Her documentary feature-directing debut, In So Many Words, premiered at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has screened at festivals, museums and conferences around the country. James was also the producer and editor of The Loving Story for which she was short-listed for an Academy Award and won a George Foster Peabody Award and an Emmy Award (Best Historic Program).
A consulting editor to the Farmer Veteran Project and a creative advisor to Sundance darling, Private Violence, James is a graduate of the M.A. program in documentary film and video at Stanford University, where she produced and directed four award-winning short documentaries. Her thesis film, Net Loss, was awarded the Nicholas Roosevelt Award for Environmental Journalism. Her other short films include Flaunt, Worms at Work and Precipice, a national finalist for the 2002 Academy Award in the student documentary category. Other recent credits include producer of The Good Fight and co-producer of The Lord God Bird.
James has worked as a director, producer, cinematographer and photographer with a number of media clients including La Noue, Rex Pix Films, Augusta Films, Roland Films, HBO, PBS, MTV, White Mountain Films, Paul Alexander, National Geographic, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Burt鈥檚 Bees and others.
James has taught documentary filmmaking at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and as an artist in residence at the Oklahoma Arts Institute.