RTV alum on Oscar-nominated team
Photo grad opens month-long show
Photo student takes first place in Wyoming contest
KUFM turns 40

RTV alum on Oscar-nominated team

photo courtesy of Elgin Smith

Elgin and Sarah Smith celebrate the Oscar nomination.

J-School alum Elgin Smith helped craft a film nominated for an Academy Award this year in the Best Documentary Short Subject category. The 26-year-old Smith, born and raised in Libby, Mont., is an assistant producer and editor for Storyville Films, based in New York City, who worked on the film “Sister Rose’s Passion.”

Smith proved the old adage that “who you know gets you a job and what you know keeps it.” Good luck doesn’t hurt either. He graduated from the University of Montana Radio/Television program in 2000, moved to New York and quickly landed an internship with Thirteen WNET, the New York area public television station. After a few months, he found a job with Storyville Films.

"I did just about everything you can imagine at one time or another,” he said in an e-mail interview. On the Sister Rose film, he organized the shooting schedule and coordinated with the director. He also helped edit the rough cut of the film.

Smith praised his good fortune. “I've been very lucky to work with some very talented people,” he said.

"Sister Rose’s Passion” is about Sister Rose Thering, an 84-year-old Catholic nun who was instrumental in changing the Catholic Church’s teaching that the Jews were responsible for Christ’s crucifixion. The 1,900-year-old charge was repudiated by the Second Vatican Council in 1965.

"Meeting Sister Rose is very inspiring,” Smith said. “She wears her heart on her sleeve and she really is a fighter. She doesn't stand for injustice one bit. I wouldn't say she single-handedly reversed the church doctrine, but it is amazing that - as a woman at that time, especially within the church - she was able to set forth the motions for change.”

Smith’s wife, the former Sarah Frick, also attended the J-school as a photo student and was a Kaimin photographer in her sophomore year. She graduated last spring from Parsons School of Design with a degree in photography. The two married before Smith’s senior year at UM and moved to New York shortly after he graduated.

"I do miss Montana at times, especially in the summer,” Smith said. But he has no plans to move back. “I will definitely stay in the filmmaking world. That's the reason that I came here to New York, and I've been lucky enough to make a living at it.”

His advice to current students? “Keep at it. Especially while you are in college, you have access to equipment and resources that you may not have when you get out. I wish I had used those resources a lot more while I was there.”

-Jim Beyer

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Photo grad opens month-long show

photo by Matt Hayes

Ravalli Store clerk and owner Eric Gunderson ends a long shift by playing a little country music. Gunderson lives with his wife and five children in their home behind the store just feet off the highway in Ravalli, Mont. " Work can get pretty slow at times, especially when we can't afford gas to get the pumps up and running," said Gunderson.

Matt Hayes, a 2004 photo graduate of the UM School of Journalism, opened a month-long show with a reception at Gallery Saintonge in Missoula on Feb. 4. Hayes' project, called "Lost on Route 93," was completed for professor Keith Graham's Documentary Photojournalism class last spring. The photographs depict life along a stretch of U.S. Highway 93 that runs through western Montana and Idaho.

"For some, a highway is only a long slab of concrete taking us from one destination to another," wrote Hayes in an accompanying essay. "For some, it's more. Perhaps an escape to another world, or, maybe, just an interesting glimpse of another lifestyle."

The show runs through March 2.

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Photo student takes first place in Wyoming contest

photo by Lee Tortorelli

On a warm Saturday afternoon at the Cody Carnival in Cody, Wyo., teens find a way to cool off.

Photo student Lee Tortorelli has won first place for feature photography in the Wyoming Press Association annual contest with a picture he took at a carnival in Cody, Wyo, last summer. Tortorelli was interning for a freelance photography company last summer and, on his off time, took pictures that he submitted to the Cody Enterprise. In the summer of 2005, he'll intern at the Enterprise.

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KUFM turns 40

The little station that started with 10 watts in 1965 has grown to 18,000 watts and has become a mainstay in many Montana households. Read the Missoulian story here.

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