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Bringing the war
home
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'Central Illinois World War II Stories' will preview new Ken Burns
film and feature local oral histories
[August 28, 2007]
SPRINGFIELD -- A preview of a new Ken Burns
documentary, the debut of several local oral histories and a panel
discussion will be featured during "Central Illinois World War II
Stories," scheduled for Sept. 6 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Abraham
Lincoln Presidential Museum in downtown Springfield. The
limited-seating event in the Union Theater is free and open to the
public and is co-sponsored by the museum and public television
station WILL-TV.
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 Attendees will be treated to excerpts from a 45-minute video
featuring the upcoming World War II documentary on PBS, "The War,"
produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The film, which premieres
Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. on WILL-TV, tells the story of World War II from
the perspective of four American communities through the individual
stories of average people whose lives were forever changed by the
war.The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library's oral history
program will then debut videotaped interviews with local citizens
about their own memories of the war, including a veteran, the wife
of a veteran, child of a veteran, a nurse and a female war industry
worker. This will be followed by a panel discussion with those who
were interviewed, including questions from the audience, moderated
by the library's director of oral history, Mark DePue.
This joint program with WILL is intended to showcase the value of
collecting and preserving Illinois' oral history. Through its
ambitious new oral history program, the presidential library is
actively seeking oral history interviews with citizens concerning
Illinois agriculture, state politics, Illinois and the war on
terror, prominent Illinois historians, and veterans of the Korean
and Vietnam conflicts. With nearly 2,000 interviews already in its
audiovisual collection, the library aims to become the state's
premier location for promoting and archiving oral histories.
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 WILL is taping oral history interviews for its "Central Illinois
World War II Stories" project. These stories, which will be shared
with the library, will premiere in September on WILL-TV, WILL radio
and www.will.uiuc.edu.
The free Sept. 6 screening event and WILL's World War II project
are sponsored in part by Supervalu, East Central Illinois Building &
Construction Trades Council, Flooring Surfaces, Clark Lindsey
Village, WETA, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
[Text
from Illinois
Historic Preservation Agency news release received from the
Illinois Office of Communication and Information]
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