MANHATTAN, Kan. - Manhattan's Monthly Film Series is please to announce that Kevin Willmott, Junction City native and professor of film at the University of Kansas, will be on hand to moderate the screening of his most recent film, The Only Good Indian, when it is screened on Tuesday July 6th, 6:30 pm, at the Manhattan Public Library Auditorium.

The Only Good Indian was written and produced by Thomas L. Carmody and stars J. Kenneth Campbell, Wes Studi, and newcomer Winter Fox Frank.

Set in Kansas during the early 1900s, a teenage Native American boy (played by Winter Fox Frank) is taken from his family and forced to attend a distant Indian "training" school to assimilate into White society. When he escapes to return to his family, Sam Franklin (played by Wes Studi), a bounty hunter of Cherokee descent, is hired to find and return him to the institution. Franklin, a former Indian scout for the U. S. Army, has renounced his Native heritage and has adopted the White Man's way of life, believing it's the only way for Indians to survive. Along the way, a tragic incident spurs Franklin's longtime nemesis, the famous "Indian Fighter" Sheriff Henry McCoy (played by J. Kenneth Campbell), to pursue both Franklin and the boy.

WICHITA, Kan. - Dolores & the Picken' Fritter with Henry Harvey will kick off the afternoon's festivities at noon at the Peace Picnic this Memorial Day, May 31, 2010, at Riverside Park in Wichita.

The Peace Picnic, organized by the Peace and Social Center of South Central Kansas and People of Faith for Peace, both Wichita-based peace organizations, has been an annual event for several years. The picnic provides a time and place for people working for peace to meet, socialize, relax, and think about a peaceful world.

MCDOWELL CREEK, Kan. - When Jan Garton passed away on November 9, 2009, one of the leading voices for conservation in Kansas was stilled.

Regarding her successful campaign to save Cheyenne Bottoms, the Hutchinson News wrote after Jan's death, "Jan Garton's life story perfectly illustrates how one person can make a difference." Jan's public actions and public words are well known.

Less well known, even by her friends, is her poetry. As Jan's executor, I had to clean out her file cabinets, and there I found writing she had never mentioned. Her poems give insight into just what it was that helped her change the world.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - The Monthly Film Series takes on the issue of media consolidation next Tuesday, 13 April, when it screens Sue Wilson's Broadcast Blues - The Movie the Media Does Not Want You to See beginning at 6:30 pm in the Manhattan Public Library Auditorium. The public is welcomed to attend.

Sue Wilson Broadcast Blues laments the erosion of the contrasting-views concept in the wake of deregulation following the 1996 Telecommunications Act but also chronicles the consolidation of US media in the hands of five conglomerates over the last three decades.

Emmy-winning former news producer, Sue Wilson worked at Los Angeles' KCBS with Jim Lampley and Keith Olbermann. A 22-year veteran of broadcast journalism, she has won numerous awards include Emmy, AP, RTNDA, and PRNDI for work at CBS, PBS, FOX, and NPR. Read her blog at: http://www.suewilsonreports.com/

MANHATTAN, Kan. - What now seems like a lifetime ago, I taught English as a Foreign Language in Naples, Italy. A young lady came into my life for the academic year 87-88. She was the younger sister of a friend, and the last child of huge German Catholic family. She was a student at the University of Kansas and had come to Naples to study the great 20th Century Neapolitan playwright, Eduardo De Fillippo.

Her spirit of adventure and wonderment amazed me.

Her talents for acquiring language, overcoming obstacles, and seeing possibilities impressed me.

Now 22 years later she still does.

GREAT BEND, Kan. - Black History Month seems to be losing some steam, and in a way, that's a good sign. Because taking an entire people group and saying: "You get one month, and it is the shortest month of the year," is a little confining. African-Americans have made contributions every month and every day and every hour of every year. Without them, what would America be like? Or would it even exist?

I had an exhilarating moment in December, when I learned that Oscar Micheaux, who is buried in the Great Bend Municipal cemetery, was going to be named as the USPS "Black Heritage" stamp honoree for 2010. Micheaux is the 33rd annual "Black Heritage Stamp" honoree. The series began in 1978.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - For its March installation, Manhattan's Monthly Film Series presents Mike Ramsdell's The Anatomy of Hate; A Dialogue to Hope on Tuesday 16 March (NB: date change). Winner of the Best Political Documentary at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, it was also shown at the Carter Center as part of Atlanta's 2009 Docufest Independent Film Festival where it won the Audience Choice Award. The film reveals the shared narratives found in individual and collective ideologies of hate, and how we as a species, can overcome them.

For six years, Ramsdell worked with unprecedented access to some of the most venomous ideologies and violent conflicts of our time including the White Supremacist movement, Fred Phelps' brand of Christian fundamentalism as an anti-gay platform, Muslim Extremism, the Palestinian Intifada, Israeli Settlers and Soldiers, and US Forces in Iraq.

GREAT BEND, Kan. - I love having the blues, blues records that is. Growing up, especially in my high school years I knew I was uncool. My CD case never had Brittany Spears or N*SYNC in it. I tried to like that music, I just never "got it."

I always felt the lyrics were missing something, they were devoid of feeling. The kids singing were too young to understand pain and failure.

MCDOWELL CREEK, Kan. - Artist Betsy Roe was hard at work on Sunday--lying in the sunwarmed grass at Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge, a native prairie preserve in the heart of the Flint Hills. "I felt daunted, this project seemed so big," she says. "So I lay down in the grass, and the word 'center' came to mind. I just lay there and felt the warmth. I thought about 'center,' 'centering,' 'centered'--all the different meanings."

Betsy RoeRoe was in the middle of one of the most difficult parts of the artistic process--acknowledging obstacles, awaiting guidance, inviting inspiration. Her openness paid off: her contemplation of "centering" allowed her to imagine a design not only taking shape but taking root in that particular location. With renewed zest, she went back to pounding in stakes and laying out string, marking dimensions for an outdoor work of art to honor the memory of Jan Garton, the conservationist who saved Cheyenne Bottoms and who passed away Nov. 9, 2009.

Roe has been commissioned to do this "installation" on a three-acre brome field which is being restored to native prairie--also in honor of Garton.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - The Monthly Film Series sponsored by the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice, the Manhattan/Riley County League of Women Voters and private donors, brings a powerful documentary, American Casino, to the community this month that looks into the causes of the 2008 economic crisis.

The viewing will take place at 6:30 pm on Tuesday 9 February at the Manhattan Public Library Auditorium. The public is invited to attend.

"American Casino is a powerful and shocking look at the subprime lending scandal. If you want to understand how the US financial system failed and how mortgage companies ripped off the poor, see this film," commented Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist.