Thirty-six years ago, Hugh OConnor, a respected, world-renowned filmmaker from Canada, went to Eastern Kentucky to document poverty in Appalachia. Landowner Hobart Ison, angry about the way the media portrayed the area, shot and killed OConnor. Ison served one year of a 10-year sentence. Years later, filmmaker and native of Kentucky, Elizabeth Barret, madeStranger With A Camerato look at the ethical conflict of the OConnor incident from both sides of the lens.

West Virginia Universitys Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is presentingStranger With A CameraThursday, Oct. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 205 of Martin Hall on WVU s Downtown Campus.

Following the one-hour film, a 45-minute question and answer panel discussion regarding the ethical and cultural ramifications of the film will be held. Panelists will include Barret, Judi Jennings, co-producer and principal researcher forStranger With A Camera,and WVU Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism Professors Joel Beeson and Terry Wimmer.

This free, public event is being presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. SPJ will provide refreshments following the panel discussion.

In a story which appeared in the July 11, 2000, issue of The New York Times,Stranger With A Camerais described asa thoughtful and disturbing documentary about what happened to OConnor and why. But Ms. Barrets film has another important agenda.Can filmmakers show poverty without shaming the people we portray?she asks, raising the general question of exploitationShe has composed her investigation as a haunting narrative, but without losing sight of reportorial fairness.

Barret has pursued an abiding interest in the history, culture and people of Appalachia. She is the producer/director ofStranger With A Cameraand works as a community-based artist with Appalshop, the award winning media arts center. In her documentariesQuilting Women(1976),Hand-Carved(1980),Coalmining Women(1982) andLong Journey Home(1987), Appalachians tell their own stories. These films have been screened at film festivals and venues worldwide.

Barret is a recipient of a Kentucky Arts Council Fellowship in Media Arts, a NEA Southeast Media Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship. She is currently involved in outreach using her documentaryStranger With A Camera,which premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on the PBS seriesP.O.V.

Jennings is a cultural historian and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. Her publications include The Business of Abolishing the British Slave Trade, 1783-1807 (Frank Cass, London, 1997). Jennings was the founding Director of the University of Louisvilles Womens Center and is currently the Director of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, whose mission is to promote positive social change by supporting varied feminist expression in the arts. She also serves as a member of the Appalshop Board of Directors.

Beeson is an assistant professor at WVU specializing in visual communication. His 15 years of professional experience have seen his photography appear in publications such as USA Today, Southern Living magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Phoenix Gazette, The Times of London and the Dallas Morning News.

Beeson also has done assignments for commercial and institutional clients that include national and local advertising agencies such as the Kellogg Foundation, U.S. Steel Corp., Birmingham Public Schools, Idaho State University, City National Bank of Louisiana and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Dr. Wimmer is a native of Princeton and graduated from the WVU School of Journalism in 1976. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill as a Freedom Forum Fellow. Following his WVU graduation, he worked as a reporter and editor at the Charleston Gazette and the Orange County Register in California, where he was a part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team that exposed fertility clinic fraud.

Wimmer returned to WVU in the fall of 2000 as the Shott Chair in Journalism. The Hugh I. Shott Jr. Foundation endowed the $1 million chair to honor its familys leadership in West Virginia news media and to enhance journalism in the state. He has taught at the high school and college levels specializing in content development, interactivity and new media. He is the advisor of the WVU SPJ chapter.

For more information on this event, contact SPJ President Grant Smith at 304-319-0276 or SPJ Advisor Terry Wimmer at 304-293-3505 ext. 5420.