‘It gives meaning to your life,’ filmmaker Kevin Willmott says of the work during virtual talk
When Kevin Willmott was in fifth grade, a comic book gave him his first lesson in Black history.
The illustrated pages of “Negro Americans – The Early Years” told the stories of Daniel Hale Williams, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and more. They were lessons that Willmott said he didn’t realize he wasn’t learning in school up to that point.
On reflection during a virtual talk, he said seeing those lessons entwined with entertainment in the comic helped him make the connection of sharing history with others through storytelling.
The Watkins Museum of History hosted “Film and Community: An Online Talk with Kevin Willmott” Monday evening. The Academy Award-winning professor of film and media studies at the University of Kansas shared more about his roots in the Sunflower State and why he came back here to make his first film.