CAMPUS BUZZ
BY SANDY SMITH
Now for some reel news: Is the Annenberg Public Policy Center adding "film underwriting" to its list of projects? No, according to manager Debra Franklin. But that doesn't mean that it can't chip in for a worthy production: the APPC was one of the principal underwriters of the documentary film "The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords," which aired on PBS Feb. 8. It turns out that Annenberg School Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson was acquainted with filmmaker Stanley Nelson, who produced, directed and co-wrote the film chronicling the rise, influence and decline of the black press in America.
More on film moguls: Gretjen Clausing is crossing the Schuylkill. After a decade with the Neighborhood Film/Video Project at International House, she has signed on as program director for the Sharon Pinkenson Film Project, the eponymous brainchild of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office's executive director. The Pinkenson Project will be housed in the American Music Theater Festival's new Harold Prince Music Theater, set to open next month on Chestnut Street just off Broad, and will bring repertory cinema, an International House staple, back to Center City after an absence of more than a decade.
And finally, reel news from the neighborhood: A film crew took over the 4400 block of Osage Avenue last week to begin shooting a new feature. The film, called "Jesus' Son," is a low-budget production directed by Alison MacLean. The film focuses on the trials and tribulations of a heroin addict in the 1970s - the film's title comes from a Velvet Underground song about the drug - and is being filmed here and in Tucson, Ariz. It's scheduled for release later this year.
90 hours of nutritious advice: That's the amount of time Jane Brody, registered dietitian and manager of Pennsylvania Hospital's Food and Nutrition division, has spent over the past 14 years giving tips on food and nutrition to the listeners of WPEN (950 AM). Divided into 90-second bites, that's 3,600 "Nutrition Notes" she's recorded for the station in the past 14 years, making it the station's longest-running news feature.
Penn in ink: "This story is still far from over." That was Washington Semester Program Associate Director Mark Rozell's pithy summary, as reported in USA Today Feb. 15, of the state of the Clinton sex-lies-and-audiotape scandal after the impeachment effort failed in the Senate. As if to underscore this point, two days later, Trustee Professor of Law Geoffrey Hazard told The Washington Post that the president could indeed be fined for contempt, as a judge in the Paula Jones civil suit has threatened. "There are cases where litigants have been less evasive than that" and been fined, he said...Biology Professor Ingrid Waldron noted that the "marriage effect" on longevity is not as uniform as press reports suggest. In the Valentine's Day San Diego Union-Tribune, Waldron noted that the effect is not as consistent for women as it is for men, and added that "people in a marriage filled with conflict are much worse off than people who are happily married."
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