Eminent Filmmaker

GAMBIER, Ohio (January 18, 2007) Faculty Lectureships is hosting a visit by documentary filmmaker Stephen Ives, who for more than two decades has produced and directed exceptional works for public television.

First, in Higley Auditorium on Monday, January 29, at 7:30 p.m., Ives will give a lecture titled "From Blackjack to Bourbon Street: Capturing the History of Las Vegas and New Orleans on Film." Then, on Tuesday, January 30, in Olin Auditorium, Ives will lead a Common Hour discussion on the racehorse Seabiscuit.

Ives's collaboration with filmmaker Ken Burns, beginning in 1987 and spanning a decade, included producing The Civil War and Baseball, and producing and directing The West (1996). Ives founded Insignia Films in 1988 to develop his own projects. Its first production, and his first work as director, was 1990's Lindbergh, a critically acclaimed documentary for The American Experience on PBS. Subsequent works have included a documentary about Seabiscuit (2002), which won an Emmy for outstanding writing and was called the best documentary of the year by Sports Illustrated; Reporting America at War (2003), examining the work of a century's worth of war correspondents; and, most recently, Las Vegas: An Unconventional History (2005) and New Orleans, both for The American Experience. New Orleans will premiere on PBS on Monday, February 12.

A graduate of Harvard College, Ives is married to landscape designer and Kenyon graduate Anne Cleves Symmes, Class of 1984.