Film Center Established at Roger Ebert's Illinois Alma Mater

Chaz Ebert and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced April 2nd the creation of The Ebert Center in the College of Media, funded in 2009 by $2.5 million from Ms. Ebert and Pulitzer-winning film critic and UIUC alum Roger Ebert (who died April 4, 2013), plus $1 million from an anonymous donor. Ms. Ebert tells The Hollywood Reporter, “They had asked Roger to be a visiting professor, but he asked himself, what could he do that would outlive him, and that wasn’t readily available." The Center, which works with the existing cinema studies program and contains its own screening room/classroom, will combine interdisciplinary studies with the study of film, production and ethics, to encourage writers and filmmakers to think critically and craft more humanitarian films that tell stories that matter.