Award-winning screenwriter and producer James Schamus, who has worked in the film industry for over two decades, will deliver Carleton College’s weekly convocation address on Friday, Oct. 14. Schamus’s presentation, entitled “My Wife is a Terrorist: Lessons in Storytelling from the Department of Homeland Security,” will explore the narratives of the American intelligence apparatus. Convocation is held from 10:50-11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel, and is free and open to the public.
Most people assume that movie and television studios are the places where the stories we see on the screen are shaped. But in his presentation Schamus will make the argument that the greatest stories of all can be found not in Hollywood, but in the secretive halls of Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Md., and Alexandria, Va.
Schamus is the CEO of Focus Features, a motion picture production and distribution company responsible for such films as “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), “Milk” (2008), “A Serious Man” (2009) and “The Kids Are All Right” (2010). The critically acclaimed “Brokeback Mountain,” produced by Schamus, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and won numerous other awards. Schamus wrote the screenplay for the Cannes Film Festival award-winning “The Ice Storm” (1997) and the Oscar-nominated “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000). Schamus has been credited as a producer of 40 other films besides “Brokeback Mountain,” and has won a total of 17 awards for his work.
Schamus, who attended high school in Hollywood and received a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, is also a respected film historian and theorist and the author of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Gertrud”: The Moving Word (University of Washington Press, 2008). He is a professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts.
For more information about this event, including disability accommodations, contact the Carleton College Office of College Relations at (507) 222-4308. Skinner Memorial Chapel is located on First Street between College and Winona Streets in Northfield.
