Film Details

Before the Russo brothers, before Jim Jarmusch, before Robert Banks, there was Richard Myers (b. 1937 in Massillon), an internationally celebrated Ohio filmmaker creating 16mm shorts and features from his home base in Kent. Myers' films (eight features and 14 shorts in over 40 years) have been acclaimed by such critics as Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael. They have won top prizes at the Ann Arbor and Chicago Film Festivals, and have been exhibited at MoMA, the Whitney, the National Film Theater in London, and the Venice Film Festival, among others. Myers has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, an American Film Institute Grant, and an NEA Independent Artist's Grant for filmmaking, to say nothing of numerous grants (and a two-year Major Fellowship) from the Ohio Arts Council. He taught film production at Kent State University from 1964 to 1991 and is now Emeritus Professor, School of Art. This afternoon Myers will introduce moviegoers to his surreal, visually stunning, dream-based work with a unique program of hand-picked excerpts from several of his shorts and features (including Akran and 37-73). He will also talk about his films, take questions from the audience, and exhibit large-scale frame blow-ups. After the screening, Myers will sell and sign copies of a handsome new hardcover book, The Films of Richard Myers, which presents an overview of his remarkable career in words and over 200 pictures—mostly film stills.