QUICK TAKES - April 24, 2009
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University of Illinois film students should start exercising their thumbs.
Film critic Roger Ebert and his wife, Chaz, have donated $1 million to his alma mater to create the Roger Ebert Program for Film Studies Fund.
The gift from the Chicago Sun-Times critic was announced Wednesday during the 11th annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in Champaign, Ill.
The school will continue to raise money for the program. When the total reaches $5 million, it will become the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies, which will teach film criticism, history, exhibition and production, school officials said.
Earlier Wednesday, officials in neighboring Urbana honored the 66-year-old Ebert by placing a bronze plaque on the sidewalk in front of the house where he lived with his parents from his birth in 1942 until 1961.
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