students. . Cinema Interruptus One of the events of the conference is the Cinema Interruptus, hosted for many years by film critic Roger Ebert. Ebert selected one movie and showed it late afternoon at the beginning of the week, in a normal, uninterrupted way. Then, for a total of 8 hours spread over the following four afternoons, the movie was dissected almost on a frame-by-frame basis. Ebert, or anybody else in the audience, could pause the movie at any point and comment about any aspect: plot points, acting or directing techniques, camera movement, frame composition, etc. Roger Ebert moderated Cinema Interruptus from 1969 to 2006. In 2008, he shared an explanation on the program's beginnings: While Ebert was recovering from cancer surgeries in 2007 and 2008, RogerEbert.com founding editor and CWA participant Jim Emerson stepped in to moderate during his absence. Ebert returned for 2009 and 2010, but mainly as a contributor, using his computer as his voice in order to participate. In 2009, after cancer robbed him of his ability to speak, Ebert invited the director Ramin Bahrani to go through his Chop Shop using the Interruptus method: "The smallest details of the film reflected the vision of Bahrani and his cinematographer, Michael Simmonds. He explained why each shot was chosen. How each was choreographed. How the plot, which seems to unfold in a documentary fashion, has a three-act structure, a character arc, and deliberate turning points. Why there was a soccer sticker on the back of a pickup truck." Bahrani told Ebert he'd do anything to meet Werner Herzog, so they "conspired to lure Werner to Boulder in 2010, where he joined Ramin in a shot-by-shot analysis of Aguirre, the Wrath of God." In his memoir Life Itself, Ebert writes that "Although I couldn't speak, it was an inspiring experience for me, bringing these two men together in the act of watching a great film... I was deeply satisfied every afternoon by the Interruptus sessions, and at some point that week I realized it would be my last trip to Boulder. I had come the first time forty years earlier. As I watched a great director whose career I'd admired from 1968, and another who had emerged in the last few years, I thought that was symbolism enough. I gave Interruptus a push and knew it could sail on its own. I felt good that Herzog had been