The University of Alabama Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility and the department of journalism and creative media will host the 12th annual Documenting Justice film screening at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, at the Bama Theatre in downtown Tuscaloosa. The screening is free and open to the public.
The event will feature short documentaries created by students who dedicated a year to learning how to document and analyze culture and social experience — and communicate about issues of justice and injustice in Alabama — through nonfiction filmmaking. A former Documenting Justice student also will present his latest film.
The students, who are pursuing degrees in a wide range of fields, produced the documentaries as part of a two-semester course co-taught by award-winning filmmaker Andrew Grace, director of the Documenting Justice program and instructor in the department of journalism and creative media, and Rachel Morgan, lead programmer for Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival.
Documenting Justice is a signature initiative of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, which established universitywide programming supporting the development of projects that nurture social responsibility and reflective, thoughtful citizenship. UA has offered the Documenting Justice course since 2006.
“Ethical citizenship requires a strong sense of empathy and compassion,” said Stephen Black, UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility 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.”
Learn more about Documenting Justice and other CESR initiatives at www.cesr.ua.edu.
About the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility
The University of Alabama’s strong commitment to civic engagement and its history of community-university partnerships served as a foundation for the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, which was established in 2005. CESR staff develop, and assist faculty members in developing, service-learning courses that engage students and 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.