Library U

Even before the recent attacks on media, America's news industry was threatened.  Brier Dudley, editor of The Seattle Times Save the Press public service initiative, will discuss what's happened to American's local news ecosystem and what can be done.

Brier Dudley has been with The Seattle Times since 1998 and was a member of the editorial board for five years. He spent fourteen years covering Microsoft and the technology industry, including nine years as a columnist for The Seattle Times Business and Technology sections. A third-generation Seattleite, Dudley received a B.A. in English from Whitman College and studied film production in Italy.  He has won numerous regional and national awards.

At the Bainbridge Book Festival.  From its very beginnings, cinema looked to literary sources for inspiration.  At first, theatrical plays seemed like the obvious choice, but eventually novels and short stories became the most popular source materials for the Hollywood studios to adapt (or exploit, depending on your point of view).  But with this shift came an important philosophical question that producers and studio chiefs had to negotiate: how faithful should a film adaptation be to the original?  Join Seattle International Film Festival Programmer Dan Doody, who has also worked as a book seller, as he looks at ten popular films adapted from novels, discusses how faithful they remained to their literary origins, and why in each case it does (or doesn't) matter.  We'll also ask the question: how is the possibility of a a film or TV adaptation of their books influencing writers today?

When the American Revolution finally came, it arrived first in Boston.  We will learn about Boston's role as the center of American political, economic, and military resistance and the city's pre-war military preparations and intelligence organization.  We'll also look at the first days of fighting, including Lexington Green, Concord Bridge, Bunker Hill, and the British withdrawal from Boston.

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" The answer to this question - or refusal to answer it - cast hundreds of lives into turmoil at the dawn of the Cold War.  The Red Scare that erupted in the 1940s allowed the House Committee on Un-American Activities to grab headlines by parading prominent Hollywood figures before the cameras.  This presentation, illustrated with film clips, tells the stories from this heartbreaking and scandalous era, and how notables such as Humphrey Bogart, Elia Kazan, and Charlie Chaplin were swept up in the frenzy.  We'll also ask a question: with today's politics at a boiling point, are we living in such as period again?