03.08.2016
Judson University is pleased to announce that film producer Ralph Winter will be the recipient of this year’s Imago Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor given to an individual whose work in film has significantly shaped the discourse on faith and ethics in the arts.
Winter, a devout Christian and passionate producer, will receive this award in person during the 12th annual Imago Film Festival that will be held on the Judson campus in the Thulin Performance Hall in the Thompson Center (1151 N. State St., Elgin) Tuesday–Saturday, March 29-April 2. In fact, Winter will engage in a career retrospective interview and accept the award on Saturday, April 2, the last day of the film festival. General admission for this event is $10. Admission for Judson faculty, staff and students is $5. For a full schedule of film festival events, click here.
Winter has produced a long and impressive list of blockbuster films, including those in the “X-Men,” “Star Trek” and “Fantastic Four” franchises. His latest is “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny,” a project that he worked on this year as the executive producer.
When he is not working behind the scenes on a mega-film, he travels extensively as a speaker and consultant for various organizations, conferences and church groups. He has led workshops and classes associated with the Veracity Project, Biola University, Regent College and Fuller Theological Seminary.
This California native and UC Berkeley grad once thought of becoming a pastor or history teacher. But his life’s trajectory led him to make films instead. His entry into the film business came when the department store where he worked needed training videos. That led to him winning awards for short films, and before long he was called upon to help with post-production work for Paramount Pictures television, where he worked on shows like “Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley” and “Mork and Mindy.”
Eventually, Winter broke into the film business and has experienced vast success producing big-budget movies of mass appeal like “Star Trek,” “X-Men,” “I, Robot” and “The Giver,” to name a few.
He has produced a number of Christian films as well, including “Thr3e,” “Hangman’s Curse,” “The Visitation” and “House. It’s also been reported that he is working on a film version of C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters.”
Winter speaks often and openly about his faith, but he makes it clear the role he believes movies play in the lives of people: “You want to make movies to entertain people,” says Winter, whose movies have surpassed the $2 billion mark at the box office. “People don’t want to come to the theater to be preached to. Let’s just tell the story. If the story does resonate with something deeply in the human journey and allow an audience to grapple with real life, it’s going to find a way to resonate in the way God created us. I don’t know what we are afraid of. We should let that happen.”
For a full schedule of film festival events, click http://www.imagofilmfestival.com/.
Judson University is a fully accredited, private Christian university of the liberal arts, sciences and professions. Judson offers degrees in more than 65 different majors/minors for traditional, graduate, and adult students. Judson University ranks consistently among the Top Tier of Regional Colleges in the Midwest by U.S. News & World Report and was recognized recently as a “Christian College of Distinction” for the 2015-2016 academic year. With an academically challenging environment and encouraging spiritual community, Judson shapes lives that shape the world.
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