I got a message this morning from filmmaker Paul Moon, whose documentary “LowerTown Paducah” about the artists and the program that supports them there is showing Friday in Louisville’s International Festival of Film.
Whittaker Chambers
Another film currently in production that he’s working on is about Whittaker Chambers, the writer and editor who joined the Communist Party in the 1920 only to go on later to testify in the espionage trial of Alger Hiss.
Writer and theater critic Terry Teachout, the librettist for two operas, “The King’s Man and “Danse Russes,” being performed this weekend by the Kentucky Opera and the University of Louisville, also has a tie to Chambers. Teachout edited the 1989 collection of essays “Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959,” which contains Chambers’ short stories, essays, articles, and reviews that originally appeared in Time, Life, National Review, Commonweal The American Mercury, and the New Masses.
Teachout worked on the two operas that are being performed this weekend with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec.
“I’ll be taking a break from the film festival to attend the Saturday afternoon Kentucky Opera performance. Looking forward to that” Moon wrote.
Fun to see the cross pollination of the arts, and artists, from other parts of the country that happens in Louisville.
