The Muslim community in Birmingham, the residents of Moss Point, Mississippi, the oldest African American fraternity; those are just a few of the people UAB students profiled this year as part of the school’s Community Documentary Filmmaking class. Launched in 1999 by an anthropologist at UAB, the idea is to document the experiences of different communities in Birmingham while giving UAB students experience behind a camera.
Documentary filmmaker Michele Forman is one of the instructors. She says while the five minute shorts are produced in a very short time span, the work her students produce is “amazing”. And the feedback from the students, and those they profile, has been pretty good the seven years the program’s been going.
This year’s films are debuting tonight at 7 p.m. in the McWane Center’s Imax theater.
