As movie fans, history buffs and others simply interested in silent film legend Buster Keaton arrive in Iola this weekend, Jill Warford will be eager to mention another prominent filmmaker with southeast Kansas ties.
Fort Scott’s Gordon Parks — a celebrated filmmaker, photographer, poet, author and composer — will be the focus of Warford’s presentation at 2 p.m. Friday at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
Like the rest of the two-day film festival and workshop series, Warford’s presentation is available free of charge.
“I was honored and delighted that they invited me,” said Warford, executive director of the Gordon Parks Museum at Fort Scott Community College. “It’s kind of funny how things turn out.”
Warford was formerly one of the planners of the William Inge Film Festival in Independence. She assisted former Bowlus executive director Mary Martin and others as they planned a weekend festival to honor Keaton, who was born in nearby Piqua.
The event, held in 1993, was so popular that Martin and the other organizers decided to make the Keaton festival an annual affair.
PARKS GREW up in Fort Scott, the youngest of 15 children. Following the death of his mother, he moved at age 16 to live with his sister in St. Paul, Minn.
He bought a used camera at the age of 25, working as a fashion photographer, then for the Farm Security Administration.
A 1948 photo essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a job as a photographer and writer with Life Magazine, making him the first black to have his photographs printed in the magazine.
His career soon expanded to literature, music and film. In 1963, he wrote the semi-autobiographical “The Learning Tree” about a young African-American growing up in rural Kansas.
He also served as a consultant on a number of films and documentaries before writing a screenplay gleaned from “The Learning Tree.”
Parks turned the book into a motion picture starring Kyle Johnson as the film’s protagonist.
The movie marked Parks’ second foray into the history books; his was the first Hollywood studio film to be directed by an African-American.
The filming also helped introduce Parks to Warford, also a Fort Scott native. She was 12 years old in the summer of 1968 and was among the scores of crowds who watched as Parks filmed several scenes in and around Fort Scott.
“He used several people from Fort Scott as extras in the film,” Warford said. “I wasn’t in the film, but several of my friends were.”
Recently uncovered slides by J.K. Graham, a friend of Parks’, will be shown at Friday’s presentation, showing scenes from the filming process in Fort Scott.
One shot in particular shows a crowd gathered at the intersection of National and 10th streets in downtown Fort Scott to watch the filmmaking.
“I can’t find myself in the photograph, but I’m fairly certain I was there,” Warford said.
After “The Learning Tree,” Parks later gained even more fame among the movie public when he directed the 1970s “Shaft” action films.
WARFORD’S OWN interest in film led to her involvement with the William Inge Festival in Independence. She would frequently invite Parks, which he ultimately accepted in 2004.
Their encounter, and Warford’s appreciation of Parks’ work, led her soon thereafter to FSCC, which at the time was building a new fine arts center on the campus grounds.
The Gordon Parks Museum and Center for Culture and Diversity has become a centerpiece of the Fort Scott campus and features more than 30 of his photographs, including his iconic “American Gothic” photo, as well as those on the Tuskegee Airmen, Ingrid Bergman on Stromboli and others. Several other of his personal effects were donated later on, including his writing desk, donated by Bill Cosby.
THE PARKS Center will host its own celebration Oct. 7 and 8. For more information on the upcoming events, visit gordonparkscenter.org.
Schedules for the Buster Keaton Festival, meanwhile, are available at www.iolakeatoncelebration.org.
The Keaton Celebration is sponsored by the Sleeper Family Trust, Kansas Humanities Council, Iola Convention and Tourism Committee and with help from private donations.
