African-American filmmaker Allen Willis dies at 94
sfgate.com | Mar 7th 2011
(03-07) 14:59 PST San Francisco, CA (AP) --
Allen Willis, a pioneering African-American filmmaker who documented
significant periods in San Francisco Bay area history, has died at age 94.
Willis passed away Feb. 23 in Oakland, according to the East Bay Media
Center, which houses his archives.
After moving to the Bay area in the 1950s, Willis became the first African
American in California broadcast journalism when he took a job at San
Francisco's KQED television in 1963, the Berkeley-based center said. Before
that, he studied under photographer Ansel Adams and collaborated with
filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Willis received numerous awards, including three Emmys, for films that
chronicled major events and cultural movements such as Martin Luther King
Jr.'s 1967 "white backlash" speech at Stanford University and the
psychedelic drug experience. His 1970 film "Stagger Lee" documented an
interview with Black Panther leader Bobby Seale during his incarceration in
the San Francisco County Jail.
Longtime friend Mel Vapour, co-founder of the East Bay Media Center,
described Willis as a "cultural provocateur" with a keen eye and an
inquisitive nature.
"When it came to events here in the Bay area, he looked at them as
explosive, exciting and they need to be documented," Vapour said Monday. "He
was always out there capturing the moment."
After retiring from KQED in 1986, Willis continued writing a column for the
Marxist-Humanist publication "News and Letters" until 2008, under the name
John Alan.
Willis is survived by a sister, Thelma Willis Prather, of Maryland, the San
Francisco Chronicle reports. He was preceded in death by his wife, Lillian.
A memorial is planned for April 2 at 1 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library in
Oakland, the East Bay Media Center said.
Original Page:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fn%2Fa%2F2011%2F03%2F07%2Fstate
%2Fn115223S45.DTL
Shared from Read It Later
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Sixties-L" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
