Cumberland's Keough follows his passion for film education

SOUTH KINGSTOWN - Kyle Keough, 21, of Cumberland, a senior at the University of Rhode Island, has a good idea what his future holds. He'll be attending one of the top film graduate schools in the country, URI announced last week.

This fall, Keough will attend the University of Iowa, considered one of the premier film schools in the nation. The school also has an internationally acclaimed creative writing program. Keough's master's program will give him the option to apply to the doctorate program during his second year.

Rather than rent flicks at a local Blockbuster when he was a teen-ager, Keough says he remembers hanging out at the Cumberland Public Library, looking for Japanese films, especially those directed by Akira Kurosawa.

"My passion was always in film," he said, "but I didn't consider it a realistic career option until my first film class at URI. After that, I was hooked."

This year, Keough has been awarded URI's highly competitive President's Excellence Award in Film Media.

"Kyle has an imagination as sprawling and disciplined as it is inventive and focused," said John Leo, chairman and professor of the URI film media program. "His skills and powers of critical viewing, thinking and writing, have wowed his faculty and peers alike."

Said Keough, "For me, the moving image is the dominant art form of the 20th century and beyond. It has the capability to inspire and profoundly affect the lives of so many. By critically working with film, I want to promote film for what it is: a vehicle, with which betterment, whether through the self or through a communal experience, can be achieved. I admire filmmakers who use their craft as a tool for advocacy, and I think they do more good than even they may sometimes realize."

Though he is not a filmmaker, nor interested in becoming one, his passion lies in critical theory, the aesthetics of film technologies, and education, and although he's not a hands-on lights, camera, action guy, he says he understands the power of film to effect change.

He helped develop a fund-raiser for a New Orleans neighborhood rebuilding itself in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, part of which was the screening of a student-made documentary on potential damages to Rhode Island coastal zones and wetlands from hurricanes.

"I did a lot of community service growing up," said Keough. "I spent years with TOPSoccer, a national network of soccer teams for the handicapped, and I was involved in the Boy Scouts and am a very proud Eagle Scout. So a big objective for me in finding an occupation was to find something where I could be a positive influence."

All those hours spent in the Cumberland library when he was a teen were applied to his honors thesis this year. Titled "Cowboys and Shoguns," his paper deals with the evolution of the "Western" genre by way of a cross-cultural exchange between the United States and Japan in both pre- and post-World War II films.

Keough says he's always been drawn to teaching. "Perhaps it's the ability to inspire those you teach, but I always knew that I wanted to be an educator at some point. I want to be 'that professor' who inspires students to do great things."

Keough graduates from URI with the Class of 2008 on May 18.

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