I grew up in Birmingham, but never expected that I would work as a filmmaker in Birmingham; that seemed to be a career I had to pursue elsewhere. And sure enough, my first job in the industry was in New York City for director Spike Lee, developing new projects for him to executive produce. The part of the job I enjoyed the most was working with writer-directors, thinking about story and character as we worked to take a script to the screen.
Michele FormanAfter working on Lee’s film 4 Little Girls, a feature-length documentary about the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, I knew I wanted to find a way to continue to work in my hometown. The experience of using film to explore a meaningful and often painful history changed my career path profoundly. I was very lucky that this realization occurred at a unique moment in media history, when emerging digital technologies were making documentary film production newly affordable and easily shareable.I was also fortunate to find UAB interested in creating a Media Studies Program dedicated to using these new technologies to connect students to issues they cared about in the Greater Birmingham Region. UAB’s commitment to extend the classroom into the community has had a deep impact on students through the years, allowing them the opportunity to master directing, cinematography, editing, and producing skills while engaging with some of the pressing questions facing us all.
I still make documentary films, working with professionals in the industry on the coasts, but some of my most satisfying work on story and character is happening right now with our undergraduates. They have not shied away from stories about poverty and racial injustice, about environmental threats and the importance of historic preservation and green space, the role of the arts, and the impact of scientific innovation. The students understand the power they wield with the camera, and their diligent work has been awarded and recognized in a myriad of ways.
Just last night, I watched CAS student Kelsey Harrison (English) walk across the stage at the Sidewalk Film Festival to receive the Jury Prize for Best Student Film. Harrison won for the film “Coming and Going” she made in a Fall 2014 course I team-taught with Dr. Kerry Madden-Lunsford in the Department of English. Harrison is in a long line of film festival winners, starting with a 2004 film by Bo Hughins and Neil Kirkpatrick, both Art & Art History students at the time. Their film “Benching: The Art of Watching Trains” has had a surprising impact on Birmingham’s landscape, serving as an inspiration for the California landscape architect Tom Leader, who designed Railroad Park. He asked for permission to post “Benching” on his firm’s website to give the students credit for their vision.
I have now been around long enough to watch students develop into professional filmmakers, building impressive careers. Ingrid Pfau (Individually Designed Major in Environmental Science Filmmaking) garnered the 2014 National Science and Media Award, presented by Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and WGBH in Boston for her film on epilepsy, “Seizing the Unrecorded.”
In an era when the Internet has increased the reliance on visual and multimedia communication from all industries, alumni from the UAB Media Studies program have reported using filmmaking in ways that continue to surprise me. From Fulbright research in Australia to the the Glen Iris Elementary School garden, in hospitals and art galleries, corporate suites and police departments, our graduates continue to inspire me with the transformative power of their films.
Michele Forman is the Director of Media Studies and Board Chair of the 2015 Sidewalk Film Festival.
