Bulletin Board: NEMA Announces 2026 Golden Omega Award Winner

Distributed by Good DocsProduced by Robin GreyDirected by Joanna Hock2018, Streaming, 72 mins Directed by Joanna Hock, this film will keep the viewer interested from the very first moment. Within the first 60 seconds, the film shares its story, its characters, and its heart. The camera focuses on six students at Charlotte’s Northwest School of the Arts. They have been offered to produce and audition for the first high school performance of The Color Purple. They will be working under the direction of Corey Mitchell, Tony Award Winner for Excellence in Theater Education. Six students will be in the final cast. We follow their journeys from audition to callbacks, rehearsals to performance. The camera work and editing parallels beautifully with the elements of the story. At times the camera is like a fly on the wall, watching for vulnerable moments. Most times, the camera is moving from shot to shot, and capturing a multitude of moments in the lives of the students. For example, the camera focuses on the moment the call-back list is placed on the bulletin board. We don’t linger, the scene opens with Mitchell putting up the sheet, everyone checks, and then joy, disappointment, happiness, perhaps defeat. The camera is there in the moment but quickly moves to a shot of talking with a student in another space. The camera is always in motion, which balances with the energy of the students and their passion for the work. There is an arc in the film when one of the cast members loses a family member during opening night weekend. The message that the arts are healing, is loud and clear. The film does not end there, it goes on to look at statistics and reports on arts and education programs. Programs can go from fully funded to no funding at all -- and it takes these types of experiences to make an impact. Their journey takes the students to a large theater conference, where they will audition for multiple theater companies over a weekend, including a performance of The Color Purple one evening. The students comment that without this experience, they would have never believed it possible to attend and perform at a national conference. Purple Dreams is an example of a documentary where art is used to engage and challenge, often with a focus on marginalized groups. Theater, by its very nature, is a great vehicle for engagement-it allows permission to be open and vulnerable, try new things, and take on challenges. Ms. Hoak has provided an intimate portrait of how art and life are intertwined. This film is highly recommended for colleges and high school programs, as well as arts education organizations. Documentary titles that deal with similar subjects: Shakespeare Behind Bars, Caesar Must Die, Spettacolo, Shakespeare High, and OT Our Town. Awards:Jury Award, Outstanding Achievement in Social Impact, Stony Brook Film Festival; Audience Choice Award & Best of Fest, River Run International Film Festival; Jury Award, Most Inspiring Documentary Feature, Hollywood Film Festival

2006 Call for Abstracts

In the March 2005 issue of JCE, I read the article concerning the JCE ChemInfo: Organic Web portal that is currently being developed. In the article, Hans Reich mentioned that this new site was being developed to provide direct links to high quality data (pKa values, acronyms, A-values, named reagents, etc.) that organic chemists would likely prefer to have at their fingertips (via two-click access). I believe another important Web resource for organic information is the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry’s Web site. This site is a portal that chemists and others can use to find information relevant to organic chemistry. The main page of the site serves as a bulletin board to announce major meetings and provides basic information on them (such as registration deadlines and abstract submission directions). It also lists information on the availability of and winners of awards provided to graduate students and others. Furthermore, separate pages on the site are provided to give rapid access to electronic copies of journal articles, links to high quality organic resource sites, and free advertisements by professors and companies seeking to employ organic chemists as postdoctoral researchers or scientists. Each page of the Organic Division’s site also links directly to Matt McIntosh’s excellent site listing graduate organic research groups in the U.S., including those seeking open postdoctoral positions, and any academic institution with an open faculty position.Recently, it became apparent to me that the Organic Division’s Web site has lacked a comprehensive readily available listing of various tables of high quality data that researchers, students, and others can use as a reference source—a resource that Reich has been working diligently to provide over the past several years, and one that JCE Online hopes to provide as well. While I had questioned the necessity to start another organic chemistry Web portal, Reich rightly pointed out that the problem with the Web is not too many links, but the necessity to provide accurate comprehensive (useful) tables of data. (For example, several sites list named reactions, but none of the sites are comprehensive in their listings of the reactions.) In any event, each page of the Organic Division’s Web site now includes a link to Reich’s organic data site in the sidebar via the link labeled “Organic Data Tables”.Also of note, an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed for the Organic Division’s Web site was recently created. Now, people can access the most recent Division news headlines via their favorite RSS reader (like the Yahoo Web portal). It is anticipated that RSS will develop into a fundamental technology that people will use to get the most important updates for the information that they personally select in a way that they want to receive it. For example, CNN has separate RSS feeds for national news, world news, financial news, and technology news.The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry’s Web site is intended to serve the members of the organic community. Thus, you are encouraged to send announcements of interest to the organic community (such as meetings, calls for nomination of awards, announcements of major awards won), suggestions, and any comments.

Abstract:Kudos2009 AAA Award Winners, Part IIGrant RecipientsAward RecipientsFunding Highlights from the AAA Bulletin Board