Violence on the big screen is as old as film itself. In 1903 The Great Train Robbery featured the on-screen massacre of train robbers, and D.W. Griffiths’ 1916 film Intolerance showed a decapitation. The adoption of a production code in the 1930s set some limits on Hollywood’s depiction of violence. Communications professor Stephen Prince (Virginia Tech), author of Screening Violence, says this all changed in the turbulent ’60s. Prince discusses the anti-violence messages such filmmakers as Wild Bunch director Sam Peckinpah hoped to convey with their super-violent works.
Also featured: Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Spencer Nakasako (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities) talks about teaching at-risk youth to make films about their own lives.
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