The Department of Cinema Studies invites UO students to: "Filmmaking Masterclass with Alexi Pappas and Laura Wagner."

Co-director Alexi Pappas and Producer Laura Wagner will offer insight into the creative and logistical challenges of making an independent feature in Tracktown–Eugene, OR. An unconventional coming-of-age film that blurs the line between fiction and lived athletic experience, Tracktown (2016) draws on Pappas’s dual identity as an elite Olympic runner and filmmaker.

Free and open to UO students.

About the Filmmakers

Alexi Pappas–Co-director, Co-writer: Alexi is a filmmaker and a professional athlete training for the 2016 Olympics in the 10,000 meters. Alexi completed her thesis in poetry at Dartmouth College where she graduated magna cum laude before running off to compete in the 2012 Olympic Track & Field Trials. In 2011 Alexi co-wrote the script for the award-winning feature film Tall as the Baobab Tree. Alexi was also a member of the Dog Day Players improv theatre troupe at Dartmouth and is a graduate of the UCB Theater improv program in New York City. She is the co-founder of Film Fatales Portland.

Laura Wagner–Producer: Laura, founder of Bay Bridge Productions, produces independent films and theatre projects. She is the recipient of the Sundance Institute’s Creative Producing Fellowship, the San Francisco Film Society’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation Fellowship, and the IFP/Cannes Marche Du Film Producer’s Network Fellowship. She was nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for It Felt Like Love, the critically acclaimed feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Filmlandia Masterclass: A Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Series Special Event

Cosponsored by: Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Endowment; Department of Art; Department of Comparative Literature; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; Native American and Indigenous Studies; Folklore and Public Culture Program; School of Journalism and Communication; Art House Theater; DUX Present; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of U.S. Western History; and Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities.