Glenda Drew and Jesse Drew – Open Country
Please join us for a visit by traveling UC Davis professors Glenda Drew and Jesse Drew! They will be coming through town with their music documentary Open Country, which they intend to always be experienced in-person. They have had a local musician open each screening so Fronjentress will start the night off!
Open Country is a journey into the roots of American Country music, reclaiming it as the creative musical expression of working people of all colors. Through archival clips, contemporary interviews, performances, and animated graphics, Open Country repositions country music into its rightful place as a people’s music.
UC Davis Magazine article on the film
Glenda Drew’s research is based at the intersections of visual culture and social change, with an emphasis on the working class. Her subjects include country musicians, feminists, truck drivers, and waitresses (oh, and birds). Her practice is multifaceted in form and includes: film & video / graphics & motion graphics / interaction & participation / photography. She is currently a Professor of Design [specializing in digital media] and Chair of the Graduate Program in Design at UC Davis.
Jesse Drew’s work and research has been centered on the theory and practice of alternative and community media, particularly electronic media. New technological developments coupled with an increasingly fragmented civil society have propelled alternative communications activities into the cultural mainstream. Over the years, blogging, videostreaming, Low Power FM Radio, cable television, mesh networks, peer-to-peer computing, social networks, texting, online BBSs, list-serv activism and a myriad of other activities have come to take a central place in our social infrastructure. It is within such practices that his research over the last 30 years has been based.
