From the screening room to the classroom Professor of cinema believes that teaching theory and history of film is crucial to success in the busi ness

SAL FARIAZ Assistant Sports Editor @S_Fariaz

It’s a moment he’ll never forget. Sitting in the front row watching “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a budding film fanatic knew that movies would play a major role in his life.

Today Ken Windrum is a full time assistant professor of cinema at Pierce College. He has been teaching at the school since 1998.

“He is very liked by his students,” said Ida Blaine, director of the Encore program at Pierce, in which Windrum teaches . “They admire his passion for cinema.”

It wasn’t only the sci-fi classic that he loved growing up. Windrum’s dad took him to see “Lawrence of Arabia” as part of a double feature.

“The second movie was over two-and-a-half hours long. My dad couldn’t believe that I wasn’t getting impatient. I was mesmerized,” Windrum said. “Everyone has a certain art form they tend to love and mine is film.” His love for films first made him want to be a director. He wanted to be the guy behind the scenes and display his creativity on the big screen.

Windrum began to study a lot of the technical aspects of the business, such as filming on 16 millimeter, during his undergraduate program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He then began to realize that the critical studies classes were what really drew his attention and excited him.

“Would I still direct,” Windrum asked. “In a fantasy world? Where someone gave me $100 million and I could be directing George Clooney and Julianne Moore in a script that was written by Quentin Tarantino, sure it would be a lot of fun. I don’t have a lot of patience with the technical and mechanical parts of the job.”

During his undergraduate education, Windrum wrote and directed a melodrama set in Los Angeles about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“My film is still around in 8 millimeter with a 16 millimeter synchronizable sound track in a box,” Windrum said. “I haven’t seen it in 30 years.”

Windram recalls that his earliest project contained film elements that are very typical of a first-time director.

“I filmed it in color and black and white because I was trying to