WEST PLAINS, Mo. – Missouri State University-West Plains’ annual film series will continue at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 13, with the showing of “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the West Plains Civic Center theater.
The theme for this year’s series is “A Novel Idea” and features films whose stories originated from literature, organizers said. Admission is free.
Released in 1962 and based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, “To Kill a Mockingbird” tells the story of the racially segregated, Depression-era south through the eyes of a fiesty six-year-old tomboy, Scout. Serving as the story’s narrator, Scout begins her tale as an idyllic remembrance of past events from her childhood with her brother Jem and friend Dill, but it soon becomes an odyssey through the fires of prejudice and injustice when her widowed father, Atticus Finch, is appointed to defend a black man from a false accusation of rape against a white woman. Scout, Jem and Dill soon learn that one can never really know or understand another person unless one sees life from the other’s point of view.
The film stars Gregory Peck in an Academy Award-winning performance as Atticus; Mary Badham in the Oscar nominated role of Scout; Brock Peters as defendant Tom Robinson; and Academy Award-winning actor Robert Duval, in his first feature film, as Boo Radley, an eccentric loner who eventually comes to Scout and Jem’s aid.
Horton Foote’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel earned him an Oscar for Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium at the 1963 Academy Awards.
Leigh Adams, assistant professor of English, will facilitate discussion following the film’s showing.
This is the 15th year for the film series, hosted by the University/Community Programs (U/CP) Department. Movies will be shown at 6:30 p.m. every Thursday night in February.
For more information about the annual film series, call the U/CP Department office at 417-255-7966.