Documentary by UA Students Wins at Sidewalk Festival

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – “The Chief,” a documentary two University of Alabama students created through UA’s Documenting Justice course, won Best Alabama Film at the 13th annual Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival held recently in Birmingham.

A jury of film professionals from around the world judged the film, which captures former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s reflections on his controversial life in politics, against all feature and documentary films made in Alabama that screened at the festival this year.

“It’s a great honor to have a film selected for this award,” said Andrew Grace, director and instructor of Documenting Justice. “It’s a testament to the quality of work coming out of the Documenting Justice program and the dynamic films that are being made by UA students.”

Documenting Justice, a two-semester documentary filmmaking course for non-film majors, focuses on issues of justice and injustice in Alabama. Since 2006, undergraduate and graduate students have produced short documentaries as part of the program. When they made “The Chief,” during the 2010-2011 academic year, Christopher Scott was an undergraduate student majoring in religious studies and Mary Baschab was a third-year law student.

“Part of our motivation to make this film was in reaction to the polarized political discourse that we have come to accept as the norm in our society,” Scott said. “While we were critical in our portrayal of Roy Moore, we were more concerned with challenging the audience by showing them multiple sides of an individual rather than simply attacking or praising. There are so many fascinating parts of Roy Moore’s story that are lost when we only think of him as the Ten Commandments judge.”

Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary relieved Moore of his office in 2003 after he refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building.

Baschab said the project gave her – and audiences – a glimpse into what Moore was thinking. “I hope that it will cause people to think about values and the lengths at which we go to ‘defend’ them,” she said. “And think about at what point going to such lengths might become counterproductive.”

Documenting Justice is a signature initiative of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, which established university-wide programming supporting the development of projects that nurture social responsibility and reflective, thoughtful citizenship.

“Ethical citizenship requires a strong sense of empathy and compassion,” said Stephen Black, CESR director. “Developing such qualities requires the ability to imagine what others see, feel and experience. A central focus of CESR, therefore, is the development of courses such as Documenting Justice in which students learn the personal stories of people outside their immediate sphere.”

Fourteen students are enrolled in the 2011-2012 Documenting Justice course. Their films will premiere at a public screening at Tuscaloosa’s Bama Theatre in April 2012.

Learn more about Documenting Justice and other CESR initiatives at www.cesr.ua.edu

About CESR – The University’s strong commitment to civic engagement and its history of community-university partnerships serve as a foundation for CESR. The staff develop  – and assist faculty members in developing – service-learning courses that engage community organizations in partnerships designed to both enhance academic goals and apply scholarly learning to salient community issues. The service experiences are integrated into the students’ academic curriculum, providing structured time for students to think, talk and write about what they did and observed.