"John Lewis, Get in the Way"

On Tuesday October 11 at 7pm in Classroom Unit 2, filmmaker Kathleen Dowdey will present her film John Lewis: Get in the Way (2020). In a longitudinal study with interviews shot over 20 years, the film follows John Lewis, the civil rights hero, congressional leader, and human rights champion whose unwavering fight for justice spanned the past 57 years. The son of sharecroppers, Lewis grew up in the segregated South and rose from Alabama's Black Belt to the corridors of power on Capitol Hill. John R. Lewis died in 2020 and in 2021 UCSC's College Ten was renamed and dedicated to his honor.

 

On Wednesday October 12 at 11am at the Porter Market Cafe, FDM students have the chance to grab a coffee and talk with Kathleen Dowdey about the film and her work as a filmmaker. This will be a small, informal event, where you'll get plenty of opportunity to speak directly with Dowdey, who writes, produces, and directs long-form documentary, nonfiction, news, talk shows, specials and series for broadcast and cable television on NBC, CBS, PBS, TBS, TLC, A&E, HGTV, Lifetime, Discovery and The History Channel. For five seasons she was a director (DGA) on the Emmy award-winning talk show, Dr. Phil, for CBS/Paramount. Most recently, she produced and directed  John Lewis: Get in the Way, with a primetime premiere on PBS. She has traveled widely with the film to speak on voting rights and social justice activism. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the International Documentary Association.