Inspiring Change: A meet and greet and film-screening with acclaimed filmmakers Chip Duncan and Salim Amin

Nairobi-Based Filmmaker and Son of Legendary African Documentarian Mohamed Amin Joins Acclaimed Milwaukee Filmmaker and Photographer Chip Duncan for

Public Reception, Film Screening

The Friends of the Charles Allis, in Partnership with Ellenbecker Investment Group, to Host Special Event at Charles Allis Art Museum May 18

MILWAUKEE, WI - April 24, 2018 – The Friends of the Charles Allis is inviting the public to a special meet and greet with two internationally acclaimed filmmakers from disparate countries, but with a shared mission: to help soften barriers to thoughtful exchange across the greater Milwaukee community by sharing the heartening journey of emergent African peoples through film and photography.

African filmmaker Salim Amin and Milwaukee-based photographer and filmmaker Chip Duncan will greet guests May 18 at a reception open to all who are interested in attending in exchange for a small donation to the Charles Allis Art Museum. After the meet and greet, the critically-acclaimed, award-winning 90-minute documentary “Mo & Me” will be screened following a discussion with the artists. The Ellenbecker Investment Group (EIG), a museum supporter, has helped to make this event possible.

Amin, who is chairman of Nairobi-based Camerpix, served as executive producer of “Mo & Me,” a 2006 documentary that chronicles his famous father's life. His father, Mohamed Amin, was a photographer and frontline cameraman most famous for his coverage of the 1984 Ethiopian famine, which inspired a collective global conscience and served as the catalyst for the Live Aid concerts, Band Aid, and USA for Africa. Born in Kenya at the height of Africa’s colonial decline, the senior Amin witnessed and recorded the alienating currents of his beloved continent projecting those images across the world. His life was cut short in 1996 when hijackers took over an Ethiopian airliner forcing it to crash land in the Indian Ocean.

“Mo & Me” has been recognized for best documentary 15 times in the United States, Canada, India and Africa, including the Grand Jury Award at the New York International Film Festival.

Amin is a Fellow of the African Leadership Initiative and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. In 2010, Amin was one of only 150 people from around the world invited by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Presidential Entrepreneurship Summit in Washington, DC.

Chip Duncan, filmmaker, author, photographer and president of Milwaukee-based The Duncan Group, met Salim Amin through mutual friends, Producer Joslyn Barnes and Actor Danny Glover. Duncan and Amin have been friends and colleagues since that first meeting, collaborating on a variety of projects. Duncan is an admirer of both Amins’ work, having travelled in the footsteps of the senior Amin four times studying and photographing the community-building and strengthening of societies in once-ravaged African countries.

Duncan is a highly regarded and prolific photographer and documentary filmmaker. His photographic images appear in the book Enough To Go Around – Searching for Hope in Afghanistan, Pakistan & Darfur (Select Books, NYC, 2009). A photographic exhibition of Duncan's images from Afghanistan premiered in 2011 at the World Peace Festival in Berlin, Germany. A second photographic exhibition featuring images from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Darfur, Sudan premiered at the O Street Museum in Washington D.C. and at the Council on Foreign Relations n New York City.

Duncan’s latest photography book, “ Inspiring Change” is launching May 17 and will be available for sale at the Charles Allis Art Museum event.

Duncan and his company’s repertoire of films includes a three-part public television series The Reagan Presidency (broadcast internationally in 2013), which includes interviews with Condoleezza Rice, Douglas Brinkley, Oscar Arias, Sandra Day O’Connor, Walter Mondale, George Shultz, Paul Volcker, Henry Cisneros, Robert Reich, Reza Aslan, and Andrew Young, among others. Other notable productions include: the 2009 PBS Special Landslide: The Presidency of Herbert Hoover and the two-part public television documentary A History of Prayer In America and the PBS Special In a Just World – Contraception, Abortion & World Religion, among others.

Duncan has filmed in more than 45 countries. His documentary television specials and series have won more than 125 national and international awards. Broadcast networks include PBS, HBO, Discovery, TLC, Showtime, Lifetime and Sundance Channel, among others.

What: Social Gathering and Discussion with Photographers Chip Duncan and Salim Amin

When: Friday, May 18th

6:30 pm – 7 pm Meet and greet with photographers

7 pm – 8:30 pm Screening of Mo & Me

8:30 pm – 8:45 pm Intermission

9:00 pm – 9:30 pm Q&A with Mr. Amin and Mr. Duncan