The innovative documentary filmmaker and alumnus Errol Morris (BA'69, History) visited UW-Madison October 21-22 as the capstone event of the month-long retrospective "Elusive Truths: The Cinema of Errol Morris."
Morris' visit was a featured program in the Year of the Arts schedule, a celebration of the arts on campus which will continue through the academic year.
Since launching his film career in 1978, Morris has directed nine feature documentaries and nearly 1,000 TV commercials and public service announcements. He produced two seasons of the highly regarded television series “First Person” (2000-01).
Morris’s film work has won wide acclaim. His documentary portrait of Robert MacNamara, TheFog of War (2003), won the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary, and his first feature The Gates of Heaven (1978) was hailed by critic Roger Ebert as one of the ten greatest films of all time. His groundbreaking 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line is credited with solving a 1976 Texas murder case and absolving a wrongly imprisoned man.
Morris has garnered MacArthur, National Endowment for the Arts, and Guggenheim fellowships, and in 2007 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A sample of Morris's television work and all of his features and were screened through September and October 2010 at three venues: UW Cinematheque, Memorial Union and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. A video installation of Morris's TV work continues at the Museum through December.
Morris spoke at Memorial Union on October 21 as part of the Distinguished Lectures Series. More than 500 people came to hear Morris offer a witty and engaging reflection on his experiences as a UW-Madison undergraduate in the 1960s and he answered questions about his film career. He also met with students from the Departments of History and Communication Arts, discussing his views on documentary filmmaking and taking questions.
To cap off his appearance, Morris presented his new film Tabloid–an irreverent comedy about a former beauty queen whose life became fodder for the tabloid press--to a capacity audience at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. He afforded Madison the privilege of a sneak preview of a film that has yet to go into commercial release, and the audience responded with a warm welcome for the visiting artist.
Morris confirmed how deeply he continues to value his UW degree and the time he spent in Madison.
He reiterated on several occasions two particular legacies of his undergraduate career. He stressed the good fortune to have studied in the History Department in the 1960s, a program which he identified as the best in the nation. He also acknowledged the intellectual mentorship of the eminent Wisconsin historians Harvey Goldberg (1922-87) and George Mosse (1918-99), to whom he dedicated his 2003 film The Fog of War.
Second, Morris spoke fondly of the experience of learning about cinema through the film archive of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, housed at Wisconsin Historical Society. He said he watched hundreds of classic films from the Center’s massive collection and acquired the appetite for movies that helped direct him toward a career in cinema.
Morris is proud to be a UW-Madison alumnus, and, in turn, the university community can take great pride in the artistic achievements of one of its own.
The “Elusive Truths” program was primarily sponsored by the Departments of History and Communication Arts, with the cooperation of the UW Foundation, the Arts Institute, and several campus cosponsors.
