Filmmaker Lyda Kuth ’78 will present LOVE AND OTHER ANXIETIES on February 26 in Lecture Hall Three, at 6:30. The event is free.

From right to left: Kent ’74, Lily, Lyda ’80

(OLYMPIA, WA) Lyda Kuth and her husband Kent Christman were both born in Ohio and enrolled at The Evergreen State College in the first few years after opening in 1971. Nearly a decade later, they crossed paths in Boston and later married.  Their relationship, and the universal uncertainties of finding and staying in love, is the subject of Kuth’s first feature film, a personal documentary, “Love and Other Anxieties.” Kuth, a 1978 Evergreen graduate, will be on the campus on February 26, 2013 to meet students and faculty, present a public screening of her film and answer questions.  The screening is at 6:30 pm in Lecture Hall Three.  The event is free and open to the public.  Parking is $2. 

After two decades of giving grants to New England artists and filmmakers as the executive director of the LEF Foundation in Cambridge, MA, Kuth secretly contemplated making a film. She finally admitted this desire in her mid 50s, around the time her only daughter was preparing to go to college.

Love and Other Anxieties, movie poster

Kuth decided she wanted to talk with young people in her daughter’s generation about their expectations for marriage and long-term commitment. In one scene she travels to Evergreen and interviews professor Stephanie Coontz—an internationally recognized author and expert on the history and culture of marriage—and her students. These interviews helped launch and are part of “Love and Other Anxieties,” in which Kuth also turns the camera on her own “average” love story.

The Boston Globe’s film critic Ty Burr called “Love and Other Anxieties” “extraordinarily touching in its very ordinariness” and that it bears witness to “the ache we all have to keep love fresh.”

Kuth has appeared with the film at film festivals throughout the country and the film had its theatrical premiere in Brookline, MA in November. This event is the Pacific Northwest premiere.