Press Release
University of North Carolina Asheville
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt will deliver the keynote address for UNC Asheville’s celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. week. His talk is free and open to the public and will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22 in Lipinsky Auditorium on campus.
Hurt’s 2006 documentary, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was later named one of the top 10 most important black films of the decade by TheGrio.com, then an MSNBC website. His latest film, Soul Food Junkies, won the best documentary award at the American Black Film Festival and best documentary at the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York City. Both films have aired nationally on PBS’ Emmy-Award winning series Independent Lens. Hurt is also the former host of the Emmy-nominated series, REEL WORKS with BYRON HURT.
Hurt’s writings have been published in several anthologies, including Michael Eric Dyson’s Know What I Mean? (Basic Civitas Books, 2007), Kevin Powell’s The Black Male Handbook (Atria Books, 2008) and April R. Silver’s Be A Father to Your Child (Soft Skull Press, 2008). As an activist, Hurt has served as a gender violence prevention educator. He is a founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, a college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for college and professional athletics. Hurt also served as an associate director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps.
For more information, contact Dahlia Hylton, director of UNC Asheville’s Intercultural Center and Multicultural Student Programs, at 828.251.6577 or visit msp.unca.edu.
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