ENTERTAINMENT
The University Daily KANSAN
September 30,1983 Page 6
Fair to show state films
By PHIL ENGLISH
Staff Reporter
The Kansas Film and Video Festival this weekend at the Kansas Union will feature some of the best independent films and videos recently based in Kansas. Two of the organizers of the festival said this week.
Roger Holden and Mark Syverson, board members of the Kansas Film Institute, said they decided to organize the festival because it was an event that artists a chance to show their work to the public.
They also want to shed some light on the rich film heritage of Kansas, Holden said.
For the last six months, the men have been organizing the festival, which will take place from noon to 9 p.m. tomorrow and noon to 10 p.m. Sunday.
ALTHOUGH MOST OF THE films that will be shown this weekend are unknown, Holden said he hoped that a lot of people would attend the festival.
The festival will feature comedy, music, and documentary films and videos, he said. It will also feature guest lecturers and present "Ozzi awards," in addition to some of the best films and videos at the festival. A "Grand Ozzi" is given for the best overall achievement by a film maker in Kansas.
This year's recipient of the "Grand Ozie" is Nicholas Meyer for his film "The Day After." Holden said. Meyer will accept the award Oct. 12 at the movie's world premiere in the Kansas
To participate in the festival, a film maker must be a resident or native Kansan, Holden said. The majority of this year's 'entries are from Lawrence or the University of Kansas.
Many students who entered films in the festival are looking forward to seeing the work of other film makers.
"We PUT ADS IN THE newspapers across the state during the summer and there was a tremendous outpour of interest," he said.
"I if won an award, I could say that I received the same award as Nicholas Meyer," said Tom Mahoney, Kansas City, Kan., film student. "What's great about the festival is that I get to see other peoples' work and compete against them on the same level.
"I've never entered a festival like this before, and I would like to win an Ozii," Mahoney said.
SUSAN MARUSCO, LAWRENCE graduate student, entered the festival for a different reason.
She said that, on a whim, she entered the first documentary that she had ever made.
documentary that she made. "My video fits with a theme of the festival about the history of Lawrence," she said. "It was definitely a learning experience."
HOLDEN SAID THAT the artists who would show their works at the festival would benefit by the experience.
the experience.
"An audience response is very important in showing your talent," he said. "It's not like showing it to your friends — it's judged."
Berg, who will also serve as a judge at the festival, said the festival would give film makers a sense of unity that would help sustain and encourage future film making.
EDWARDSVILLE, ILL. — Twenty-three students representing the Gamma Sigma Sigma fraternity at Southern Illinois University attempt to establish a Guinness world record for
United Press International
stuffing people into a Volkswagen Beetle. The attempt was made Wednesday.
Steve Walsh hits the road in Streets
Rv LAURIE MCGHEE
Staff Reporter
After bowing out of the successful rock group Kansas for two years, Steve Walsh has come back to the world he thrives on, and has brought three men along with him.
Together, they are set to play at the Pladium Plus, 901 Mississippi St., The band's night, will appear (omorrow in Topeka.
They are just beginning their first tour and have started in small Midwestern clubs, "really because we wanted to break some ice and get the set along more before we start playing places like Kansas City." Walsh said.
ON TUESDAY, WALSH, bass player Billy Greer and guitarist Mike Slamer relaxed backstage after their sound check before the show. The mood was easy and relaxed. Only drummer Tim Gehrt was absent because he was paying a visit to his father, who now lives in Lawrence. The band decided to start its tour by playing in smaller towns to promote their first album.
while the audience. I'll see you at left, the right, and
Walsh, a St. Joseph, Mo. native, left Kansas after six albums and
headline tours in the United States as well as Europe, but the shift from
stadiums to nightclubs wasn't a negative one.
The band's first single, "If Love Should Go," will see airplay this week, while the album. "First," is set for an Oct. 10 release.
"When you're standing on stage at Madison Square Garden, it doesn't look like a crowd any more. There are waves, and it's like an ocean," he
said. "But when you're standing in the Pladium in Lawrence, Kansas, they're real people.
"We DIDN'T WANT TO start out right away on a big stage," said Atlanta native Greer, 31. "We wanted to start out on a real small level.
"This place isn't any less important to us," said Walsh, "but we would like to grow back into the stadiums and the bigger crowds. If we don't
Slamer said the clubs with 3,000 to 5,000 seats were "small enough for us to control the sound, but we can still relate to the audience."
Yet the thought of playing in a stadium doesn't intimidate him at all. The performance at the Pladium Plus was only the group's fourth after two years of writing and practicing and "getting comfortable with it," Greer said. They're "still on the honeymom."
STREETS BEGAN AS the brainchild of Walsh after he left Kansas.
STREETS BEGIN. As the officer of Walsh after he left vielleicht,
"You'll understand the name when you hear the album." Walsh explained.
"What we sing about are real situations. We're not pretentious and dreamlike."
He said he was not comfortable with the "dreamlike" Christian-oriented music of Kansas and so broke with the group.
"I don't miss playing the music in the leak," he said. "As far as the Christian-oriented music goes, I've got a religious background. Everybody in this outfit has a religious background. But it doesn't mean you've got to go around with the Book and hitting people over the head."
"I don't feel like an entertainer when I'm preaching to some 14-year-old kid," he said.
Local promoter brings reggae music to town
Staff Reporter
By PAMELA THOMPSON
The problems of the Third World were worlds away from a Lawrence concert promoter three years ago. But after being influenced by the spiritual, political and social messages of reggae music, he decided to organize a concert in Lawrence.
He said he had gained some experience as a concert promoter after going on a three-month
Steve Rector, a former KU student and the co-promoter of the concert, said he was exposed to reggae music from a friend from the West Bank and at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
He said the Caribbean music's underlying spiritual message had affected him more than its political and social protests.
Bettin on the theory that Lawrence residents were also interested in the spiritually charged message of reggae, Rector and another local promoter decided to organize a reggae concert
"LAWRENCE IS JUST starved for reggae," Rector said.
the Jamaican poet-musician Mutabaruka, who sings, shouts and chants his original, politically inflammatory poems, will perform at the Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh and the Prairie House. Seventh and Massachusetts streets.
the concert will culminate a month of hard work by the two promoters to bring the reggae artist to the city.
artists to be introduced.
Rector said that he and Kirk Nelson, Lawrence junior, had started a production company titled Ska Productions after they heard an advertisement on radio station KJHK seeking someone to promote a reggae concert in the area.
national tour with the Phil Keagy band, which is a Christian group.
BECAUSE THE MIDWEST has not attracted as many reggae artists as cities on the East and West Coast, Rector said he decided to get into reggae and band and bring more reggae to the nation's heartland.
But he said that because Mutabaruka was more of a protest poet than a familiar reggae
said it should bring in a lot of people from the Kansas City area.
artist, the concert would be a financial risk and that he and Nelson would be pleased if they
"There's a large reggae crowd here that just doesn't get many chances to see big-name reggae artists," he said. "I don't even think I could attend the reggae concerts in the entire Midwest last year."
Mutabaruka
David Starke, Prairie Village senior, and KJHK radio disc jockey, said that Mutabaruka's album "Check it!," which was co-produced by Earl "Chinna" Smith, the most widely recorded guitarist in reggae history, had been played often on KJHK.
Mutakura's poetry and his hypnotic and erie instrumental music called "dub," which is made through the use of a studio sound mixing equipment. And it's also what he uses the mainstream regae fans, Rector said. He
"Mutabaruka is a bit different because he's a poet, and a valid one." Starke said. "He recites his poetry in patios, a non standard regional dialect, so he's not a singer or a fast-talker."
Mindy Giles, vice president and publicist of Alligator Records of Chicago, said Mutabaruka and his band, the "High Times Players," were her second "near sell-out" U.S. tour this year.
"He goes beyond the musical boundaries into the cultural and political areas," she said. "No other musical groups have done that since the 'Beatles.'"
"MUTABARUKA IS THE biggest new name to pop out of raga in a long time," Giles said in a telephone interview last week from Chicago. "He's able to fill Bob Marley's shoes."
Mutabaruka said in a telephone interview from Chicago last week, that his poems were intended "for every man on earth, black or white."
Lawrence Symphony Orchestra to present free concerts
A convert to Rastafari, a socially conscious religion, Mutabaruka has had three books of poetry published.
"I like to talk to people and reach their minds," he said. "The vibes are not physical."
The Lawrence Symphony Orchestra will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year and despite dwindling financial support, it will mark this milestone by giving three free performances.
Staff Reporter
By GUELMA ANDERSON
support from the trust fund this year and there have also been reductions of our revenue support," he said. "So we are trying to increase our fundraising efforts for private donations."
The orchestra's fall concert will begin at 8 p.m. tomorrow in the Kansas Union Ballroom.
As in the past, tomorrow's concert will be free, Casad said. But if the orchestra does not receive more monetary support, it may be forced to charge admission in years to come.
Robert Casad, professor of law and president of the Orchestra, said the orchestra relied on private donations, city revenue shares and support from money given to the city by the Music Performance Trust Fund, administered from New York.
Casad said the orchestra was formed by a group of Lawrence citizens as a showcase for him.
on NEW YORK.
"The orchestra is only receiving half of it."
CAROLYN YOUNG, TEACHING assistant for the department of economics, is an example of a talented musician who had an opportunity to perform publicly in the orchestra in 1973, he said. She still plays the violin and is the assistant concert master for the orchestra.
Charles Hoag, professor of music theory, and conductor of the orchestra, said the Orchestra had also attracted students from the University, Lawrence High School, and musicians from Baldwin and Topeka.
Visually, the performance is fast-moving and often surprising. Director Ronald Willis has made no attempt at realism. Comic exaggerations in size (a giant camera) or shape (a phallic cone of doughnuts) delight the eye, long-armed Lenin, with six years of experience and Natasha, the exotic dancer, wears dreadlocks and the suggestion of a black corset on her leotard.
The Orchestra has 75 members, he said, and more than half of them are students.
For those who can accept creative anarchy,
"DADADADADADA" is everything.
HOAG SAID THAT TO commemorate its 10th anniversary, the Orchestra was going to perform pieces from past concerts — the ones that had been a hit with past audiences.
"This is one of our most challenging concerts, and I think it's going to be one of our best," he
A cheerleader quartet (Ramos, Anderson, Tracy Iwerks, Kansas City, Mo., sophomore, and Bill Green, Glenclear, Ill., junior) on global war is also effective.
The concert will feature "Carnival Overture" by Anton Dvork, "Lincoln Portrait" by Aaron Copland and "Symphony Eroica" by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Ah-um, ee-ee, uh-uh, ow! That might be a "sound poetry" review of James Larson's "DADADADADA," an exciting but not quite surgical theatrical experience now playing at
THEATRE REVIEW
his wife, the singer Emmy Hennings, is not successful. Pure anarchy would be more fun.
"Sound poetry" is a series of shrieks and whimpers without words that was invented by the German poet Hugo Ball for his Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich during the first global war. Enthusiasmically voiced and danced by Bille Dee Anderson, Wilmington, Del., junior, "sound poetry" becomes a comic substitute for poetic talent.
THE PLAY OPENS with a song by Mary Ramos, Leawood junior, as Hennings in prison for anti-war activities. She is so miserable that she sings nostalgically of housework to the sound of a synthesizer, played by Jordan Stump, a musician, that initiates the noises of a lound plumber.
DADADADADA
Stump's original score has one love-song, "What We Were Born to Do" in which Ramos and Schoenfeld play the roles of two brothers.
Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara founded the Cabaret Voltaire in neutral Switzerland to draw attention away from national conflicts toward the anarchic creative spirit. Re-creating the Cabaret in contemporary idiom, James Larson brings Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Carl Jung, Tzara, Ball, Emmy Hennings, exotic dancers and Swiss bureaucrats into conflict with the Korean 747 crash, the KU budget and "Shawnee Mission heres."
As cabaret, the musical portrays global war, the ego of the untainted, the bureaucratic mind and momentary sexual triangles. However, an artist's ability to create a narrative involving artistic rivalry between Hugo Ball and
Mary Davidson is a lecturer in the Department of English.
ON CAMPUS
SPARE TIME
INTER VARSITY Christian Fellowship will meet at 7:30 p.m. today in the Pine Room of the Union.
ANTA MONTET-WHITE will give a speech sponsored by the Department of Anthropology at 4:30 p.m. today in the Jayhawk Room of the Union.
THE BASEBALL Simulations Club will meet at 11:30 a.m. today in the Jayhawk Room of the Union.
THE UNDERGRADUATE Biology Club will
today in the Sunflower Room of
the Kapsai Park.
THE CAMPUS COALITION for Peace and
Health dinner at 5:30 p.m.
Saturday at 1026 Missouri.
THE CENTER FOR Public Affairs-ACS StatffestMicrolab Grand Opening will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today in Rooms 121 and 123 Fraser Hall.
THE KU MEDIEVAL Society will meet at 8 p.m. Monday in the Manuscript Room of the Spencer Research Library. A professor of history of pharmacy from the University of Marburg, West Germany, will speak about astrology and medicine in the times of Martin Luther.
BLOOM COUNTY
BY BERKE BREATHED