An Ohio University alumna will school students on little-known avant-garde female filmmakers throughout history today.
Robin Blaetz, a professor at Mount Holyoke College, will speak at 5 p.m. today in the Honors Tutorial College, 35 Park Place, about the history of women in film and the experiences she had as an OU student.
“The idea is to bring the forgotten women from history into today,” Blaetz said.
Blaetz will discuss the content of her book, Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks. The book focuses on American female filmmakers from the 20th century who are often ignored for their work, according to her
Web page.
Blaetz also will touch on what led her into film. She said she unexpectedly discovered a love for film when she took a trip to Paris after graduating.
“I want to talk about my life and what happened to me,” she said.
She said she hopes to encourage students to understand their own paths in life and to be open to all possibilities.
Blaetz graduated from OU in 1978 with a degree in English. She was one of only two students in the Honors Tutorial College at the time, she said.
She has not visited Athens since 1994 and said she looks forward to learning how the campus has changed.
Honors Tutorial College Dean Jeremy Webster invited Blaetz to speak because of her past involvement with the college since her graduation and because of her research on women’s film in history.
The event is free to anyone outside the Honors Tutorial College as well, Webster said.
“I want students to learn something they didn’t know in gender studies and in film, and to connect it to their own lives,” he said.
aw317609@ohiou.edu
