Filmmakers with local ties screen latest production at USI

Richard Kane, a former producer for WNIN TV in Evansville, and Melody Lewis-Kane '73, a former University of Southern Indiana art faculty member, will screen the latest film from their company, Kane-Lewis Productions, at the University of Southern Indiana.

"Jon Imber's Left Hand" will be shown at 3:30 p.m. Friday, September 5, in Kleymeyer Hall in the lower level of the Liberal Arts Center at USI. The screening is free and open to the public.

Before his death in April of this year, Jon Imber was one of America's leading abstract expressionist painters. In the summer of 2012, he was diagnosed with ALS, a fatal illness commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

"Jon Imber's Left Hand" tells the story of his courageous and sometimes darkly humorous response to a death sentence. The film traces his adaptations, from switching from painting with his right hand to his left, and then to both hands held at his waist as the degenerative condition progresses. Adversity only makes him more determined to paint, and paint he does: more than 100 portraits in a four-month span.

"A masterpiece of intimacy in the face of tragedy, 'Jon Imber's Left Hand' is an extraordinary accomplishment in film. It is the eulogizing of the creative force and artistic life of one of America's leading painters - in his own vibrant voice" wrote Daniel Kany in the Maine Sunday Telegram.

Kane and Lewis-Kane married and moved to the east coast in 1980. While in Indiana, Kane produced several short documentaries including "Tough, Pretty or Smart: A Portrait of the Patoka Valley Boys" which won best documentary at the Cork International Film Festival and was short-listed for an Academy Award. 

While in the Washington, D.C. area, Kane-Lewis produced over 15 arts-in-education teacher training films for the John F. Kennedy Center Education Department. Kane also won a Cine Golden Eagle for his film "Faces of Microcredit" for the Microcredit Summit co-chaired by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

The couple moved to Maine in 1998. "Jon Imber's Left Hand" is their 15th film in a series on Maine-related artists. One of their films was inspired by meeting New Harmony artist Stephen Pace in 1977 while living in Evansville.  "Stephen Pace: Maine Master" was nominated for a New England Emmy Award. Another of their films, "Beverly Hallam: Artist as Innovator," was inspired by former Evansville Museum director John Streetman, who collected many of Hallam's paintings for the museum.