Jim McKay is a director, writer and producer who lived and worked in Athens during the late 1980s and early 1990s. C-Hundred Film Corp., the production company that McKay formed with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe during that time, remains active today.
The Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts will present a multimedia festival, “Everyday People: The Film, Television and Video Work of Jim McKay,” Nov. 15-18. Screenings and other events will take place in multiple venues on and off campus as part of the university’s 2013 Spotlight on the Arts festival.
Festival guests including McKay, various UGA faculty and Athens community members, and David Daley, editor-in-chief of Salon.com, will introduce screenings and participate in post-film question-and-answer sessions as well as in a panel discussion on campus.
McKay has directed numerous feature films and music videos and more than 40 episodes of broadcast and cable television shows including The Wire, Big Love, Law and Order, Treme and Breaking Bad. He has served as a producer on numerous films including American Movie (1999), directed by Chris Smith and Sarah Price. McKay was a Rockefeller Fellow in 2003 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004. In 2005, he was a recipient of the Lincoln Center Martin E. Segal Award. He is currently directing a dramatic series pilot for Amazon Instant Video.
The festival will open Nov. 15 with a 7:30 p.m. reception and 8:30 p.m. screening of Tourfilm at Ciné, 234 W. Hancock Ave. in downtown Athens. Tickets to the opening event are limited, and proceeds will go to Whatever It Takes, an initiative of the local nonprofit organization Family Connection-Communities in Schools whose mission is to ensure that all Athens students receive a post-secondary education.
On Nov. 16, a 4 p.m. screening of Girls Town at Ciné will be followed by a 7:15 p.m. screening of Everyday People. “Saints,” a 2012 episode of the HBO series Treme directed by McKay, will be screened free of admission charge at 9:30 p.m. at Little Kings Shuffle Club, 223 W. Hancock Ave.
Our Song will be screened at Ciné Nov. 17 at 2 p.m., followed by Angel Rodriguez at 4:30 p.m. and a second screening of Tourfilm at 7 p.m. Tickets to all Ciné events are available at http://everyday-people.eventbrite.com/.
McKay will participate in a roundtable discussion, “Serious TV, Streaming Media and the Latest ‘Death of Cinema’: Storytelling in the Age of Binge Viewing,” Nov. 18 at 1:25 p.m. in the Balcony Theatre of the Fine Arts Building.
The festival concludes Nov. 18 with an 8 p.m. screening of American Movie in the Tate Student Center Theatre.
