Previous Special Events

Twenty Films Essential to Cinema Literacy

Think you’re film literate? Not until you’ve experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this new series. Former Kansas City Star film critic Robert W. Butler (now a member of the Library’s Public Affairs staff) provides opening and closing remarks.

Eighteen-sixty-nine was indeed a year of sweeping changes in Kansas City, Missouri. It introduced the arrival of perhaps the most influential of technological additions ever to be made to the area—the Hannibal Bridge. It also marked the year when Annie Chambers arrived, ready to begin a new career in the thriving town. Both signaled the beginning of a new age in the Midwestern cow town.

Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar goes into Hitchcock mode for this tale of illicit love and brutal revenge. A film director accepts financing from a ruthless industrialist and falls for the man’s beautiful mistress (Penelope Cruz), who is starring in the movie.
The story is told in flashback as the director – now blind and surviving by writing screenplays – looks back on the turning point in his life and career.

In Canada, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford introduces us to teenager Del Parsons, who after his parents’ imprisonment for bank robbery flees his Montana home, beginning a new life on the Saskatchewan prairie.

Ford reads from Canada and holds a conversation with UMKC Writer-in-Residence Whitney Terrell, organizer of the Writers at Work series. Ford is the author of the Bascombe novels, which include The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land.

Co-sponsored by the Writers at Work Roundtable and the UMKC English Department.

Veteran journalist Carl M. Cannon discusses the life of first lady Michele Obama on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

Michelle Obama is the 46th first lady of the United States, caretaker of an unpaid position that nevertheless is one of the most powerful in the world. How powerful? Put it this way: Even in this rarified air, Mrs. Obama stands out for her closeness to the president.

From Adelaide in Guys and Dolls to Nina in In the Heights and Elphaba in Wicked, female characters in Broadway musicals have belted and crooned their way into the American psyche. Author Stacy Wolf looks not just at female characters but at women performers and creators to chronicle the evolution of feminist thought in this singularly American theatrical form.

Wolf is a professor of theater and director of the Princeton Atelier at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. She is the author of A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical.

Performed here by the Metropolitan Theatre Ensemble, Mama is based on Kathryn Forbes’ fictionalized memoir of growing up with a loving family of Norwegian immigrants in San Francisco in the early years of the 20th century. First produced on Broadway in 1944 (Marlon Brando originated the role of young Nels), the play offers no earth-shaking dramatic fireworks, yet it became an American classic for capturing the family’s small joys, sorrows, and aspirations.

Director Pedro Almodovar has created a traditional “women’s picture” -- but with the sort of twists we expect from the "bad boy" of Spanish cinema. Marisa Paredes plays a writer of romantic best-sellers who finds her marriage falling apart and her career threatened.

Join us for a birthday celebration in honor of Dr. Seuss!

Enjoy stories, crafts, and more. We will make Cat in the Hat hats, and play Dr. Seuss Bingo and other games inspired by Dr. Seuss books. Children are welcome to come dressed as their favorite Dr. Seuss character.

The event is appropriate for all ages. Craft supplies will be provided.

This year’s symposium examines the history and legacy of the American Civil Rights movement. At 9 a.m. Tufts University’s Leslie Brown examines the early years of civil rights activism. At 10 a.m. the University of South Carolina’s Patricia Sullivan explores the pivotal year 1963 and the March on Washington. A Kansas City Civil Rights Roundtable convenes at 11:30 a.m., and a panel discussion begins at 12:30 p.m.

Symposium workshops are ideal for teachers in grades kindergarten through 12th, but the public is welcome to attend.