Educator Ted Walch ’63 returns to Gambier this week to discuss the art and language of film.
Walch teaches the history of film at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, where he also teaches and directs theater. “One concept I teach my students is this: how to look with your ears and hear with your eyes. That concept will inform much of the discussion.”
In a two-part talk titled “The Language of Film” held Tuesday, April 5, at 7 p.m. and Thursday, April 7, at 11 a.m. in the Olin Auditorium, Walch will focus on how film is framed and the artistic value of silence.
Walch, who studied theater while at Kenyon, returned only a few years after graduating to run the Gambier Summer Playhouse. He also produced the opening play at the Bolton Theater, with Paul Newman ’49 H’61 directing. Walch created the Kenyon Festival Theater in the 1980s and served as artistic director for five years.
“I learned a great deal about how to think aesthetically about theater and literature when I was a student at Kenyon, and I have employed a good deal of that thinking in my teaching of film study,” he said.
“These talks are really talks about how art works, not just how film works,” he said. “There will be nothing discussed about the nitty-gritty of filmmaking, but, rather, an appreciation of how we think about the various ways in which film speaks to us.”
— Bailey Blaker ’18