Academy-Award winning filmmaker coming to ECU Feb. 28
Filmmaker, activist and grassroots organizer Barbara Trent will present the Global Awareness lecture at the East Carolina University School of Art and Design at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 in Speight Auditorium in the Jenkins Fine Arts Center.
Trent’s presentation entitled “Waging Peace in a Global World” will address current events, activism, media hypocrisy and the responsibility and power people have to create change. She will discuss the interconnections between the unraveling ecosystem, the failing economy and war in our society.
Drawing on nearly a half century of experience as a grassroots organizer, Academy-Award winner Trent will use footage from some of her recent films to accompany her comments.
A seasoned activist and filmmaker, Trent won an Oscar in 1993 for the documentary, “The Panama Deception,” and has both directed and produced other films including “Waging Peace,” “Destination Nicaragua,” and “Coverup: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair.” She has publicly exposed criminal activities at the highest level of government and has been the target of at least three FBI counter-intelligence operations.
Appointed as an expert senior training specialist for the VISTA Program under President Jimmy Carter, Trent has been decorated with the Gasper Octavio Hernandez Award by the Journalists’ Union in Panama and is a recipient of the American Humanist Association’s Arts Award for her “courageous advocacy of progressive ideas.”
The Empowerment Project is a media resource center serving progressive videographers and filmmakers. It produces and distributes its own documentary films and videos and provides support for independent producers, artists, activists and organizations to further social, political and artistic purposes.
Several years ago, EP founded Old Oak Homestead, a five-acre homestead that provides training in homesteading skills and renewable energy options as a means to create sustainable communities (self-sustainability and organic growing methods). For more information, visit www.empowermentproject.org.