Night Catches Us, a new film about the Black Panthers produced by UW alumni Ron Simons, will be released by Magnolia Pictures on Dec. 3. Written and directed by Tanya Hamilton, it premiered at Sundance 2010 and was an Official Selection.

This is the first feature film produced by SimonSays Entertainment, Inc., which Simons founded in 2009 to tell the stories, fables and narratives of under-represented communities. Simons left Microsoft Mail’s marketing division to earn his Master of Fine Arts in Drama from the UW in 2001. He now lives in New York City.

It’s 1976 and Marcus (Anthony Mackie) returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. He quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced and must protect a deep secret that could shatter everyone’s beliefs. For more, see the official movie site.

Night Catches Us will be screened Wednesday, Nov. 17, at Cinebarre in Mountlake Terrace. The screening will raise money for the UW School of Drama Career Entry Endowment Fund and is co-sponsored by the UW School of Drama and the Graduate School. More info in this University Week story written by Elizabeth Lowry.

Now, on to this week’s Dawg Treats:

• UW sociologist Becky Pettit and Harvard’s Bruce Western have shown that prison time traps Americans in a cycle of poverty, from the Huffington Post.
• John D. Loeser, a pain specialist and professor emeritus at the UW, is quoted in the Wall Street Journal about sugar injections healing pain. Loeser is skeptical, saying “It is completely without any scientific basis.”
• Few athletes have followed former Huskies and ex-NFL star David Kopay out of the closet. Read the story from the Arizona Republic, as well as this humbling Kopay feature from the Dec. 2008 issue of Columns.
• Douglas King, who received his MBA from the UW and served as head of the St. Louis Science Center, has been named the new president and CEO of the Museum of Flight.

Read more…