Tune into KCPT June 30, 2011 at 8:30pm for a look at what the Kansas City sound is all about. Kansas City Jazz & Blues: Past, Present and Future recognizes past music greats as well as Kansas City’s current crop of musical talent.
Director Sue Vicory spent spent three years chasing down everyone from Bobby Watson and Myra Taylor to David Basse, Marilyn Maye and Chuck Haddix to talk about and illustrate Kansas City’s musical tradition.
Tune to KCPT Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 9pm for June 8, The Topeka Tornado. This documentary about the F5 tornado that devastated Topeka, KS in 1966 was produced by Topeka Public Television Station KTWU.
Made 40 years after the tornado left a 22-mile long path of destruction through the Kansas state capital, June 8 features reactions both then and now from those who lived through it.
For more information about the film and stories from June 8, 1966, visit the Stories of the ’66 Topeka Tornado web site.
Tune into KCPT Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9pm for Moon Tosser of the Prairie. This 30-minute documentary takes a look at Mullinville, Kansas folk artist M.T. Liggett. With a cutting torch and arc welder, Leggitt transforms scrap farm equipment into totems, windmills and his infamous roadside signs. The film’s producers at Johnson County Community College spent some quality time with the ever quotable M.T. as well as some of his admirers, including Rebecca Hoffberger, from the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. KCPT’s very own TV Weasels met this colorful Kansan many moons ago while on the road filming Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations.
From noted filmmaker Kevin Willmott, it’s a documentary called “From Separate to Equal, the Creation of Truman Medical Center.” This history of health care in Kansas City’s black community touches on pioneering African-American doctors with names like Unthank and Thompson and Perry, and early hospitals like Douglas and Wheatley. There are stories about about jazz legends and black celebrities who, despite their stature, couldn’t get treatment in the white hospitals. It’s an eye opener, and a primer on how things can, with determination be changed.
Airs Thursday, April 14 at 9pm
