How Documentary Films In Communities Of Faith Can Transform Lives
By Macky Alston
As a movie and a movement lover who will be toggling between the Oscars this Sunday night and news of this nation’s tumultuous times, I wonder what it would look like if we maximized the power of film to equip communities of faith to advance justice.
I’m a documentary filmmaker. I have seen the power of documentary film to transform lives. I am also an organizer for justice in communities of faith. I have seen the power of communities of faith to transform lives. What I yearn to see is the full power of documentary films working in communities of faith to transform lives.
My dad was a civil rights preacher.
My church is a sanctuary church, a part of our 21st century underground railroad.
In this country, there are millions of progressive people of faith and tens of thousands of institutions living with the mandate to heal and repair the world. But all too often, communities of faith are disconnected from the struggles for justice of people and places they have not and may never come to know.
Documentary films can provide windows into these worlds.
And yes, in this day of Black Panther, the case should be made for using all kinds of film and media as organizing tools in communities of faith, but I want to lift up the particular value of documentary to provide windows into worlds folks need to see.
Recently, I have witnessed three examples that give me clues as to what powerful integration of film into faith-rooted organizing can look like.
Example 1: Doc Film Helping People of Faith to Advance Economic Justice
Last summer, I was at a two-day teach-in and rally for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Fifty years ago, the activist community in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. worked was leading a campaign to liberate poor people in this nation. That campaign was led by poor people. Today, a community of activists all across the country has taken up the mantle of that campaign and will launch 40 days of civil disobedience between Mother’s Day and Summer Solstice of this year.
At the state-based teach-in I attended, the facilitators shared clips from Orlando Bagwell’s Citizen King to remind us that grassroots movements led by poor people, all kinds of people, and people of faith have shaped this nation’s history.
These clips transported those gathered in the room — poor and working-class activists, organizers and leaders of faith — into fellowship with those who came before us, those on whose shoulders we perch. Our imaginations were kindled to see what is possible as well as to grapple with past mistakes. Citizen King provided a window into the civil rights struggle that restored our hope and fired us up for the campaign ahead, reminding us that times have been bad before but still we have risen.
Example 2: Doc Film Helping People of Faith to Advance Immigrant Justice
Around the same time, I attended a day-long civil disobedience workshop for leaders of faith and moral courage who wanted to put their bodies on the line and bring their communities and congregations into the movement for immigrant justice in the age of Trump.
The training was facilitated by leaders from the campaign to unseat Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, Arizona, the renegade sheriff who directed his police force to go after immigrants in illegal ways.
To bring the gathered faith leaders into the culture and practice of that campaign, the facilitators opened the session with a clip from Daniel Devivo’s and Valeria Fernández’s documentary film Two Americans. It catapulted us into their movement moment, thousands of miles away from us and a year or so ago.
Again, the window through which we witnessed the challenges and triumphs of their work made us believe we could also win. Their documentary showed us ways others have won as leaders of faith offering up their moral authority in the community on behalf of the most impacted people whose leadership they flanked.
(The picture above is a still from Two Americans. To the right in white is the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray committing civil disobedience in support of immigrant justice activists such as Ruben Lucio to her left. President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Frederick-Gray served for many years as a local pastor in Phoenix.)
Example 3: Doc Film Helping People of Faith to Advance LGBTQ Justice
I have learned some lessons in my own work at the intersection of faith-rooted justice work and documentary filmmaking. The last film I directed, Love Free or Die, told the story of the Church putting its life on the line for LGBTQ justice.
We followed Gene Robinson, the first openly gay person to be elected bishop in the high church traditions of Christendom, and the movement he was a part of that changed policy and culture in church and state in the U.S. and abroad. We folded our national TV broadcast and 400 community screenings of the film into a strategy to advance the marriage equality work of 2012 – in particular the campaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington.
At Auburn, where I work, we had spent the previous two years researching how to move conflicted Christian voters to support LGBTQ equality because they were Christian and not in spite of it.
During the year of our screenings, we used that research to equip those who attended the 400 screenings to engage their conflicted Christian friends and family in conversation to help them vote on the right side of history. We also worked with state campaigns and in partnership with national LGBTQ justice organizations to train leaders of faith to make the moral case for equality in public and in the press.
In all four states in which we did this work, marriage equality was won – not the ultimate battle for LGBTQ people in this country, but a step in the right direction. In the two states that conducted exit polls to determine what swung the vote, the Christian messaging and messengers were named as one of the top determinants.
I can’t specify what role our movie screenings, friends and family plan, and research and message training played in those victories, but I did experience deepening relationship between media makers, communities of faith, and movement workers. And that, in and of itself, advanced my own practice of engagement with communities of faith around a documentary film.
Key to movement work, to faith traditions, and to documentary film is right relationship – creating a practice and a world in which the full humanity of all is honored and the conditions all need to flourish exist.
May we filmmakers explore new and better ways to be in right relationship with communities of faith. May we share our stories of success and failure with one another so that together we create a practice from which other filmmakers can learn as they engage communities of faith.
For justice to be won, faith communities and filmmakers need each other to imagine the world as it should be and to bring it into being.
Macky Alston is Senior Vice President, Prophetic and Creative Leadership and an award-winning Documentary Filmmaker.
Follow Auburn on Twitter and Facebook for resources and inspiration by and for the multifaith movement for justice.
A version of these remarks was offered this past week at GoodPitch Local in Dallas in the company of filmmakers, organizers and funders committed to maximizing the power of media for positive social change. The Auburn team is profoundly grateful for the invitation to be a part of this transformative model of movement building.
For more information about Auburn’s work exploring how documentary film can best support leaders of faith and moral courage to advance justice, please contact Sarah Masters, director of the Hartley Media Impact Initiative at Auburn.
