![\"Walter](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/03\/WalterKorte.jpg?resize=145%2C157\")
Walter Korte, with whom I studied film as a graduate student at the University of Virginia.<\/p>\ninto film studies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Walter Korte, with whom I studied film as a graduate student at the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n
I met Mr. Korte (all the professors are “Mr.” or “Ms.” at U.Va.; only the physicians are “doctors”) my second semester of graduate school, when I took his class in Film and Literature. I remember spending many hours alone in a storage room in Wilson Hall with a 16mm projector and a print of The Magnificent Ambersons<\/em>; I watched those images over and over, my eyes wide open for what seemed to be the first time. The analytical vocabulary, the exquisite visual insightfulness, and most of all the committed love of cinema that Mr. Korte brought to every class session were deeply inspiring. I began to haunt the local repertory cinema (this was pre-video, my children). I began to go to each Wednesday’s “Filmwatchers” screenings at school. I started buying film books. In short, I became a cineaste, or at least a cineaste manque<\/em>.<\/p>\n Mr. Korte introduced me to a world of films I’d never seen before–or never truly seen. Welles, Antonioni, Altman, Kubrick, Scorcese, Hawks, Brakhage, Bunuel, Visconti, Resnais, the list goes on. An unrepentant auteurist, Korte had his own pantheon a la Andrew Sarris<\/a>, but he was always interested in the new, the fresh, the daring, and many times I saw him on a Monday morning in the grip of a movie he’d seen just that weekend. The man was simply besotted with film, which suited me just fine.<\/p>\n Best of all, Mr. Korte introduced me to the films of Errol Morris when he screened Gates of Heaven<\/em> for our Film Aesthetics class in the fall of 1981. I later helped host Errol’s visit to the University of Mary Washington in 1997, just as he was finishing up Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control<\/em>. Thus the master’s lesson came full circle for the disciple.<\/p>\n For the last three years of my residence in graduate school, I was very happy and indeed extremely fortunate to share an office with this man. We used to talk for hours about everything having to do with movies. Those were golden moments for me. He let me have the run of his collection of cinema books, too. Even now, I will sometimes feel myself pining for those days. Though they were otherwise full of late-stage grad-student pre-dissertation angst, they were also full of discovery and intense conversations that continue to fuel my own work in film studies, both when I teach and when I write.<\/p>\n Read what Korte has to say about film here<\/a>. You’ll understand my veneration for this teacher.<\/p>\n Thanks, Mr. Korte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" into film studies. Walter Korte, with whom I studied film as a graduate student at the University of Virginia. I met Mr. Korte (all the professors are “Mr.” or “Ms.” at U.Va.; only the physicians are “doctors”) my second … Continue reading