As part of Loyola University’s Lincoln Bicentennial celebration, University of Chicago film professor Tom Gunning will lecture on cinematic portrayals of the 16th president, specifically Edwin S. Porter’s one-minute silent short The Martyred Presidents (1901), D.W. Griffith’s sound feature Abraham Lincoln (1930), and John Ford’s classic Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). “I will be discussing the way that the figure of Lincoln in film has been dominated by a sense of his impending death,” writes Gunning, “transforming a living man into a monument visually, the way history and cinematic imaging converge in an image that is lifted out of everyday life.”
“Moving Monuments: Evoking Lincoln on Film” begins at 6 PM on Tuesday, March 31, at Loyola University Crown Center Auditorium, 6525 N. Sheridan. Admission is free; for more information E-mail Elizabeth Coffman at ecoffma@luc.edu.