The Denver Silent Film Festival's David Shepard Career Achievement Award for 2018 will go to Russell Merritt, who teaches film studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Russell Merritt has co-written (with J.B. Kaufman) two books on Walt Disney’s early films – the award-winning Walt in Wonderland (1993) and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies (2016). He has also authored articles on D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, animation, Sherlock Holmes, color aesthetics, and early film.  Merritt produces and directs the Great Nickelodeon Show, a recreation of a turn-of-the-century nickelodeon program which has played at the Telluride Film Festival, The TCM Classic Film Festival, Il Giornate del Cinema Muto, the Los Angeles Film Festival, The Pacific Film Archive, and assorted university campuses.