MICDS Students Create Documentary Film About Sudan

On Monday, May 9, 7 p.m.—8 p.m., the MICDS students in Ms. Lynn Mittler’s class, The Sudan Project, will present their documentary film Lost Generation: The Children of Sudan.

This film is the culmination of a year-long, multi-disciplinary course devoted to studying the history, culture and people of Sudan. In addition, the fifteen students in the class learned how to make documentary films to communicate a message.

“I came in to the class not knowing a lot about social entrepreneurship or social action,” senior Joe Strege said. “I thought taking the class would be beneficial to understanding problems in the world and knowing how to help and make my voice known.”

The course began with the students reading books and writing papers on the subject. Before they could create their final movie, the students learned how to make a documentary film by watching other documentaries and going out into the St. Louis community to shoot footage about local topics.

“This class is really different from any other class offered here because it gives you variety,” Henry Hailand, a junior and member of the class, said. “I have been interested in film for a long time so it was cool to see how documentaries are made and then making one about a country I didn’t know anything about.”

Taylor Smith, a senior at MICDS and fellow classmate, said that watching a lot of documentaries showed the class how other people try to solve problems with their films. “They gave us ideas of how to make a Sudan movie to affect other people and to help us help them.”

The students began by reviewing footage provided by an organization, Take 2, whose mission is to raise global awareness in students and to create future leaders. For their movie about Sudan the class looked through film shot by Karin Muller, a documentarian who has created films for National Geographic and PBS, and then used editing tools to create their story.
The course has affected the students in a variety of ways. For some, it has reinforced or ignited an interest in a particular field of study; for others, it has changed the way they look at the world.

“I think I see the bigger picture now,” Thomas Militello, a junior in the class, said. “You obviously know about the USA. But in this class we learned about people living on less than a dollar a day and seeing them on the film not even having shoes. Every time I used to have a dollar in the car I didn’t care about it but now I guess I’m more conscious of how I spend money. They make a dollar and that’s a couple of meals for them.”

For another classmate, junior Conor Capps, it was a reality check. “You really tend to see how grateful you are to have even a bed or something small like toothpaste. The people in Sudan don’t have anything. It’s a gut check of how much you are blessed with.”

The class would like audience members to walk away from Monday’s presentation with knowledge about what’s going on in Sudan as well as a desire to help.

“Everybody at this school lives such a privileged life but to see people living in refugee camps where they don’t even have a school, can’t buy food or sometimes don’t even get food, it’s a reality check,” Mimi Abbott, a junior in the class, said. “At the end of the film we give people options on how they can help.  We don’t expect them to go to Sudan but to at least make a small donation.”

The documentary will be shown in the Presentation Room of Olson Hall on the campus of MICDS, 101 N. Warson Road. It is open to the public and there is no cost to attend.