Screening

About Angus Aynsley

Year Released:

2011

Genres:

Film producer Angus Aynsley will return to his Indiana University alma mater to present a lecture and introduce a screening of his Academy Award-nominated documentary film Waste Land  (2010) at IU Cinema. Produced by Aynsley and directed by Lucy Walker (Devil's Playground, Blindsight), Waste Land was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature film earlier this year.

This will be Aynsley's first visit back to Bloomington in more than 20 years. "Absurdly enough, a film that helped influence me in coming to IU was Breaking Away--which then influenced me to become a bicycle racer," said Aynsley, who formed the first-ever Little 500 cycling team at his residence hall, Collins Living-Learning Center. He cycled on the Collins Graitis Little 500 team in 1985, 1986 and 1988. "At the time, I never thought I would be a filmmaker or get into filmmaking," he said.

Aynsley studied history and French at IU, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988. While he didn't take any film classes during his undergraduate career at IU, Aynsley learned about the world of independent and international film through a free film series at the Indiana Memorial Union. His good friend Ken Torres (a.k.a. "Gumshoe"), who lived across the hall in Collins, took every film class that he could and shared his insights with Aynsley. "He was a passionate lover of film--especially silent film, he loved Charlie Chaplin--and he would come over almost every night to tell me all about what he was studying in his film courses at IU."

Torres passed away a couple of years ago, but Aynsley will never forget those formative conversations, or his good friend. He also looks forward to seeing the newly transformed University Theatre building, now home to IU Cinema.