He will discuss using your creative talents for advocacy
Identified by many titles – director, screenwriter, producer and social activist – Dustin Lance Black will provide “creative food for thought” when he visits the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Best known for his award-winning screenplay “Milk,” the biopic of the late civil rights activist Harvey Milk, Black will serve as the keynote speaker for the 7th Annual Pride Lecture at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21 in Pierson Auditorium, Atterbury Student Success Center, 5000 Holmes St.
Through his creative work and life experiences, Black is intimately familiar with his topic. He will discuss how to use your creative talents to develop content that can evolve into a tool for advocacy.
“Dustin Black has years of experience creating documentaries and screenplays that address issues that are meaningful and groundbreaking,” said Susan B. Wilson, vice chancellor of Division of Diversity & Inclusion. “We are pleased to have him discuss with our UMKC and Kansas City audience his creative works and the value they bring to advocacy for the LGBT community.”
In addition to his creative endeavors, Black is a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which successfully led the federal case against Proposition 8 in California. In 2012, Black merged his passions with “8,” a new play based on the federal Proposition 8 trial. A performance was broadcast live, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon.
Black has served on the board of the Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth crisis hotline established in Harvey Milk’s old camera shop; he has been on an international equal rights speaking tour and was one of the organizers of the LGBT March on Washington in 2009.
An honors graduate of UCLA’s School of Film and Television, Black began his career as an art director and quickly moved to directing documentaries and commercials. His list of documentaries include “On the Bus” and “My Life with Count Dracula.”
The Pride Lecture, sponsored by the Division of Diversity & Inclusion, is free and open to the public. It will be held at the UMKC Atterbury Student Success Center, Pierson Auditorium, 5100 Rockhill Rd. Free parking is available in the Cherry Street Parking Garage, 50th & Cherry Streets, on levels five and six only.
The Pride Lecture series was established to create programming celebrating UMKC’s LGBTQIA and allied students, faculty and staff, with an inclusive vision of the community in which we reside.