Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville are co-hosting the premier of the new film, Blood Done Sign My Name, which is based on the Timothy Tyson memoir that received the 2007 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. The movie was released in late February to generally favorable reviews, and its Louisville premier will take place at the University’s Floyd Theater during Grawemeyer Week, April 11 through 14.

The film will be offered for general admission on Tuesday, April 13, and Wednesday, April 14, at 2 p.m. each day. The charge is $3 per person; $1.50 per student with ID. The student rate is applicable for all students from Louisville Seminary, UofL, and all Metroversity schools. The film runs for approximately two hours.

Tyson, a North Carolina scholar, earned the 2007 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his memoir analyzing the social and spiritual effects of a racially motivated murder in his hometown. In 1970, Tyson was 11 years old and living in Oxford, N.C., when two white men murdered a young black man, Henry Marrow, in cold blood. Marrow’s killers were unjustly acquitted, provoking riots and social upheaval. In his Grawemeyer-winning book, Tyson examines the killing and its aftermath from many angles, and intersperses narration of the historical events with recent interviews of principle players in the real-life drama, including one of the alleged murderers. Tyson also recounts the personal impact of the events, which included the forced resignation of his father, a progressive white Methodist minister, from his pastorate.

The film, written and directed by Jeb Stuart and starring Nate Parker, Lela Rochon, and Omar Benson Miller, is based on Tyson’s story and further illustrates how the “African American community organized and crippled the tobacco economy of North Carolina, which has not recovered to this day. Their actions empowered many young people who went on to become national leaders, among them Rev. Dr. Ben Chavis, former Executive Director of the NAACP and currently Co-Chairman with Russell Simmons of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network.”

The week of April 11 through April 14 is also Grawemeyer Week, when the University of Louisville presents the 2010 Grawemeyer Awards in music composition, education, psychology, ideas improving world order, and religion. The $200,000 Grawemeyer Award in Religion is given jointly by Louisville Seminary and the University of Louisville.

Each award recipient will present a public lecture:

• Ronald Melzack, a McGill University psychology professor, will speak April 12 at noon in 101 Strickler Hall at UofL. He won the psychology award for his research on where pain comes from, an insight that has led to innovative treatments for chronic pain.
• Keith Stanovich, a University of Toronto professor of human development and applied psychology, will speak April 12 at 4 p.m. in UofL’s University Club ballroom. He won the education award for his book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought.
• Trita Parsi, co-founder of the National Iranian American Council, will speak April 12 at 7 p.m. in Chao Auditorium at UofL’s Ekstrom Library. He won the world order award for his book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.
• Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago, will speak April 14 at 7 p.m. in the seminary’s Caldwell Chapel. He won the religion award for his autobiography, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation.
• York Hoeller, a German composer known for fusing together live and electronic sounds in his music, will speak April 15 at 3 p.m. in Comstock Hall at UofL’s School of Music. He won the music composition award for Spheres, a six-movement work for orchestra.

  No reservations or tickets are required for the talks. For more information, call Louisville Seminary at 502.895.3411, or University of Louisville’s Allan Dittmer at 502.852.5198 or 502.429.6616.