SCREENtime, TV By, For and About the Heartland, is a weekly series on KCPT Thursday nights at 8 p.m. Each week KCPT brings you programs with “local flavor” — it might be about the history of the region, or an issue facing it, a profile of an artist or musical performer, or even a showcase for one of the people making high quality independent films around here.
Screentime airs on KCPT most Thursdays at 9 p.m. Check listings for full schedule information.
Tune to KCPT Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 8:30pm for “Return to PrairyErth.” The documentary celebrates William Least-Heat Moon’s 1991 best-seller “PrairyErth: A Deep Map,” which explores the stories, people and landscape of Chase County, Kansas. Decades after its publication, director John O’Hara returns with Heat-Moon to the Flint Hills to reconnect with the land and residents of Chase County.
Tune into KCPT July 14, 2011 at 9pm for a look back at the immigrant experience that brought so many Germans from Russia into the upper Midwest in the latter part of the 19th century. It’s All Earth and Sky from Prairie Public Broadcasting gets its name from the reaction of one German-Russian immigrant when she arrived on the plains of the Midwest.
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
Airs Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 9:45pm following The Nace Brothers: Lifelong Roadtrip on KCPT
From Lawrence, KS based director Marc Havener, the story of a man who is an ordinary father wanting to leave an extraordinary legacy. As he sets out to revisit his father’s past he hopes to help his son face the future. Set in Eastern Kansas, it’s a story of regret, of reconciliation and of hope, exploring the complex relationship between a father and son. Combining panoramic cinematography with a picture-in-picture visual composition, it blends documentary and narrative techniques to present a cinematic personal essay.
View the trailer:
Thursday, March 31 at 9pm on KCPT followed by the short film And What Remains
There are bands that play a lot, and there bands that play A LOT! The Nace Brothers are the latter. Brothers David and Jimmy have been going at it together with bassist Tim Williams since 1981. And a couple of years ago, Kansas City filmmaker Ben Meade figured it was time to celebrate that perseverance in documentary form. The Nace Brothers: Lifelong Road Trip chronicles everything from their dad Johnny Nace and their musical roots in Warrensburg, to all manner of amazing tales about what it’s been like to keep rowdy crowds across America tapping their toes. If you weren’t a Nace Brothers fan already, seeing this might just change that.
Airs March 24, 2011 at 9pm on KCPT
For hundreds of years, thrill-seeking fishermen in the South have been diving into murky creeks, rivers and lakes in search of bank-dwelling catfish. In 2002, filmmaker Bradley Beesley brought the strange subculture of bare-handed catfishing to public television audiences in the award-winning film, Okie Noodling. In the sequel, Beesley returns to his home state of Oklahoma to chronicle the sport’s evolution over the last decade. He revisits the colorful, original cast and meets some new and eccentric fishermen en route to the largest noodling tournament in the United States. This latest installment also explores the legalization issues and commercialization of this once backwoods practice.
View the trailer:
Okie Noodling 2 trailer from Bradley Beesley on Vimeo.
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Visit the film’s website: http://www.okienoodling.com/
