State of Cinema: Wesley Morris

Description

Each year, the San Francisco Film Society invites a visionary thinker to discuss the intersecting worlds of contemporary cinema and visual arts, culture and society, images and ideas. This year, Wesley Morris will argue for the radicalization of Sidney Poitier and how it parallels the current climate of race in the movies.

Morris was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for criticism for “his smart, inventive film criticism, distinguished by pinpoint prose and an easy traverse between the art house and the big-screen box office.” A former writer for Grantland, Morris recently became Critic at Large for the New York Times where his colleague A. O Scott said of him, “He’s like Oscar Wilde—breathtakingly funny and absolutely serious in the same breath, able to illuminate the deepest and sometimes darkest meanings of a piece of popular culture without losing sight of the fact that it’s all supposed to be fun.”