Jason Kohl ’06 Shows His Award-Winning Film “The Slaughter” at Kalamazoo College

Kalamazoo College alumnus Jason Kohl
Jason Kohl ’06

Jason Kohl ’06 shows his award-winning film “The Slaughter” at Kalamazoo College, Tuesday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m. in Light Fine Arts Recital Hall. Sponsored by Kalamazoo College Media Studies, the film is free and open to the public.

Michigan-born Jason B. Kohl is an Austrian/American Filmmaker. He got his B.A. in creative writing from Kalamazoo College in 2006 before moving to Berlin, Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship. In 2012 he got his MFA in directing from UCLA Film School in Los Angeles.

His UCLA MFA Thesis Film “The Slaughter” premiered at the 2013 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas and was a finalist for the Student Academy Awards. It continues to play festivals like BFI London, Locarno, and Ann Arbor. Filmmaker Magazine called it “a masterfully directed story.”

The short film stars “Breaking Bad” actor Michael Shamus Wiles, and is about a pig farmer who tests his unemployed son’s determination to join the family business.

Jason’s been a finalist or semifinalist for several prestigious labs including the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, the Torino Film Festival’s Adaptlab, and the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony.

He’s an alumnus of the Locarno Filmmaker Academy and a curator for Short of the Week, the premiere online destination for short films.

From 2012-2013 he returned to Berlin to complete postgraduate directing studies at the German Film and Television Academy as a DAAD Artist Study Scholar. He remains based in Berlin, where he is developing various feature projects.

Jason does for hire directing work with his partner Nora Mandray. As Mako Film, their clients include MSNBC, Etsy and Vocativ.

His first nonfiction book, a practical guide to film school, will be published by the Focal Press in 2015.

Read more about Jason and see clips from his work here: http://jasonbkohl.com.

 

African Film Series at K, June 22-23

Four documentary films centering on social justice issues critical to both Africa and the United States and that also have global implications will be presented at Kalamazoo College, Saturday June 22 and Sunday 23, in the Light Fine Arts Building, Connable Recital Hall, at 7:30 p.m. Showings are free and open to the public.
      Saturday films are Fuelling Poverty (28 minutes) and Sweet Crude (93 minutes), which are about the destructive crude oil extraction economy and the Occupy Movement in Nigeria.
      Sunday films are God Loves Uganda (90 minutes) which analyses the political implications of the American evangelical movement in Uganda, and Native Sun (21 minutes), a film by Ghanaian rapper and visual artist Blitz the Ambassador.
      The Broadcast Africa Film Series is brought to Kalamazoo by The US-Africa Network (http://usafricanetwork.wordpress.com), an independent network with the aim of fostering an inclusive international and intergenerational dialogue about priorities and strategies for solidarity with Africa in the United States, in collaboration with Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Additional support is provided by Western Michigan University Housing and WMU Professor of Social Work and City Commissioner Don Cooney.
      The US-Africa Network Consultation is bringing together a small group of organizers, activists, and scholars living and working in Africa and the U.S. to discuss a broad range of issues such as human rights, economic justice, climate change, and threats to human security in both Africa and the United States.
      The US-Africa Network has come together in the belief that there is an urgent need to reinvigorate solidarity work between the U.S. and Africa. Their initial objectives are to foster an intergenerational dialogue on the future of U.S.-Africa solidarity work and to help activists both old and new to rethink, regroup, and claim a space for activism linking progressive movements in Africa and the United States.