"James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket" Screening with Director Karen Thorsen
Tuesday, March 4, 2025 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM EST
Johnson Center, Cinema
The Cheuse Center and Visiting Filmmakers Series present "James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket" with Director Karen Thorsen.
This very special screening of The Price of the Ticket, the documentary by award-winning filmmaker Karen Thorsen, explores the life and legacy of James Baldwin. The event is brought to you by the Cheuse Center, the Baldwin100, the Visiting Filmmakers Series, and Film and Video Studies (CVPA). It receives additional administrative support from Mason Exhibitions.
Following the screening, Karen Thorsen will be in conversation with Dr. Cynthia Fuchs and Dr. Keith Clark to discuss Baldwin’s legacy, the making of the documentary, and its continued relevance in today’s world.
We use the arts to open minds and change lives, with James Baldwin as catalyst. To ensure that his message—that inequality and injustice impact ALL of us—will be heard and debated by those who need it most. To engage diverse communities, to inspire dialogue across differences, to find common ground. To expand understanding of ourselves and each other.
- Karen Thorsen & The James Baldwin Project
ABOUT DIRECTOR KAREN THORSEN
Award-winning writer/filmmaker Karen Thorsen finds inspiration at the intersection of art and social justice. Her heroes are game-changers, the artist/activists who shape history; her films tell stories without narration, weaving first-person narratives with archival treasures. Thorsen began as a writer. After graduating from Vassar College, with a year at the Sorbonne, she was an editor for Simon & Schuster, journalist for LIFE Magazine, and foreign correspondent for TIME. Screenwriting followed, then directing. Her first feature-length documentary as Producer/Director was the award-winning JAMES BALDWIN: THE PRICE OF THE TICKET—with Co-Producers Bill Miles & Douglas K. Dempsey, Executive Producers Albert Maysles & Susan Lacy for PBS/American Masters. Widely considered a classic, the film has been honored in twenty-five countries … and is a centerpiece of Thorsen’s non-profit initiative, the JAMES BALDWIN PROJECT (JBP).
Supported by the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and State Humanities Councils, JBP outreach & engagement has already reached tens of thousands. In 2014, the original 16mm film was restored & re-mastered in honor of Baldwin’s 90th birthday. Learn more here: https://jamesbaldwinproject.org/KTBio.html
In 2015, JBP launched a nationwide series of film screenings, live presentations and public forums focused on inclusion and the meaning of brotherhood. Now, for Baldwin’s 2024-25 Centennial, JBP is exploring the theme Identity, Then & Now, one community at a time.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION TEAM
An independent production company, DKDmedia was founded by the award-winning husband & wife team, Karen Thorsen and Douglas K. Dempsey. Storytelling is their strength; history and social justice are their passions; documentary film and museum media are their most frequent formats. Whether working together or independently, their work wins awards and is seen by millions. James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket. A feature-length documentary about writer / civil rights activist James Baldwin. Winner, multiple awards. Honored at festivals in over two-dozen countries, including Sundance, London, Berlin and Tokyo. Credits: Producer / Director / Writer. A Co-Production with PBS / American Masters: feature-length version co-produced with Maysles Films; 50-minute French language version co-produced with French National Television.
ABOUT PANELIST KEITH CLARK
Keith Clark is Distinguished University Professor of English and African and African American Studies. Dr Clark earned a B.A. from the College of William and Mary (1985) and a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1993). He is the author of Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines and August Wilson(Illinois UP, 2002), The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry (Louisiana State UP, 2013; winner of the College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award), and editor of Contemporary Black Men's Fiction and Drama (Illinois, 2001). His latest book, Navigating the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines: A Roadmap for Readers, was published in Spring 2020 by Louisiana State. His critical and pedagogical essays and book reviews have appeared in Callaloo, African American Review, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Resources for American Literary Study, American Writers V, Modern Drama, and GLQ. His teaching interests include Black Literary masculinity studies, the Black bildungsroman, and African American LGBT studies. In addition to his academic interests, he is involved in several community service projects related to mentoring, tutoring, and hospice.
ABOUT PANELIST CYNTHIA FUCHS
Cynthia Fuchs is the co-founder and Director of the Film and Video Studies Program, and Professor at George Mason. She serves on the Executive Committee for African and African American Studies(AAAS). She is Affiliated Faculty with Sport and American Culture. She is the creator and curator of the Visiting Filmmakers Series at George Mason University.
In 2020, Dr. Fuchs was awarded the United Bank Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion, presented to a faculty member who has made extraordinary contributions to advancing diversity and inclusion within the Mason community and beyond. Cynthia Fuchs has worked in the areas of antiracism and inclusion for decades, and continues to do so as a member of CVPA's Antiracist and Inclusive Excellence Advisory Team and Kritikos Antiracist Reading Group Organizing Committee, as well as the Stearns Center ARIE Curriculum and Pedagogy Working Group.
Dr. Fuchs has written reviews and essays, and served as an editor for the international cultural studies magazine, PopMatters. She has written reviews for many venues, including the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Philadelphia Citypaper, Screenit.com, NPR, and Common Sense Media. She is a frequent jurist for the Gotham Independent Film Awards. She has spoken at AFI Docs, Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC's Cinema Club, the Rosebud Independent Film Festival, and the Goethe-Institut in DC.
Introductions by LEEYA MEHTA
Leeya Mehta is the Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center. She is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and essayist. Her poetry collections are The Towers of Silence, and A Story of the World Before the Fence of which Tim Seibles, former Poet Laureate of Virginia, writes, “is a lush, lyrical study of memory and history.” In 2022 her work has been anthologized in the Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets and in Future Work, an anthology of contemporary Indian writers from Red Hen Press. At the Center, she is inspired by the legacy of Alan Cheuse, who said, “Fiction, like poetry, works at its best when it brings together emotion as well as idea, passion as well as characters in the illusory unfolding we call time. When it works close to the timing of the human pulse, to the flow of our blood, the beat of our heart.”
In 2024 she received the Faculty Civic Excellence Award for her work within the classroom, and the curation of the 13-month long Baldwin100 project that celebrates the centennial of James Baldwin's contribution to the contemporary imagination: imagining a world that deepens our individual humanity. Leeya is the project manager of the Baldwin100.
