Lipscomb sponsors Freedom Riders documentary at Nashville Film Festival

Janel Shoun | 

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What they are saying about Freedom Riders

HumanDocs Film Series at Lipscomb
Lipscomb University’s School of Humanities, a part of the College of Arts and Sciences, presents a special presentation of Freedom Riders, an independent documentary by Stanley Nelson, at the Nashville Film Festival, in the Regal Green Hills Cinema, on Wednesday, April 21 at 7:30 p.m., and Thursday, April 22, at noon.
 
Freedom Riders, (www.freedomridersfilm.com), was selected for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and is the first feature-length film about these civil rights activists. It features the story of more than 400 Americans who from May to November 1961 risked their lives and endured savage beatings and imprisonment for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South.
 
John Seigenthaler, Sr., who was appointed as chief negotiator with the governor of Alabama during the Freedom Rides by the Kennedy administration, will provide his response and take questions after the Wednesday, April 21, 7:30 p.m. showing. Norma Burgess, dean of the Lipscomb College of Arts and Sciences, will introduce the film and moderate the question-and-answer session.
 
“Lipscomb University is proud to sponsor this film in particular because it makes a statement that Lipscomb as an institution takes the call to work for a just world seriously,” said Ted Parks, associate professor of Spanish who took the lead on selecting the film for sponsorship. “This film’s message of courage and nonviolence is one our world needs to hear today and one that Lipscomb wants to support in our society.”
 
The film was Nelson’s fourth film to be considered in the Sundance documentary competition, following A Place of Our Own, The Murder of Emmett Till, and The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords. Freedom Riders is set to air on PBS stations in 2011, the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides.
 
Freedom Riders is a film with a strong historical link to Nashville, as students from Tennessee State University, American Baptist College, Fisk University and Meharry Medical College were among those who volunteered to take the interstate rides on buses to draw attention to the hostility of racism, said Richard Goode, professor of history, who teaches a course on Nashville’s role in the Civil Rights Movement.
 
“In this year – the 50th anniversary of Nashville’s lunch counter sit-ins – it is important for all of us to remember the frustrating mistakes of the past and learn from the courageous leadership of so many from this city,” Goode said. “Nashville was called the ‘university of nonviolence’ in the 1960s, and showing the film Freedom Riders at the Nashville Film Festival is an inspiring tribute to that quest to build the Beloved Community.”
 
Tickets for Freedom Riders at the Nashville Film Festival can be purchased at nashvillefilmfestival.org. Cost is $12. For more information, email boxoffice@nashvillefilmfestival.org.
 
 

What They Are Saying
About Freedom Riders

 
“Freedom Riders digs deep into a critical chapter of the civil rights struggle and brings it to life in a plain but stirring way… After hearing about the federal intervention required to get those first protesters to safety, the decision of a second wave of students to pick up the torch is stirring -- all the more so because these riders, Southerners from Tennessee, were so clear-eyed about the physical threat of racism that each signed his or her will before getting on board.”
 
John DeFore, “The Hollywood Reporter,” Jan. 25, 2010
 
“Gaining impressive access to influential figures on both sides of the issue, Nelson chronicles a chapter of American history that stands as an astonishing testament to the accomplishment of youth and what can result from the incredible combination of personal conviction and the courage to organize against all odds.”
 
indieWIRE, Jan. 22, 2010
 
“A combination of archival footage and chilling testimonies from the original freedom riders, government officials and witnesses to the violence are used to tell the story of how a small group of determined people forced the federal government to defend their rights. Freedom Riders skillfully tells an important, yet  overlooked, scrap of history from the Civil Rights Movement.”

Jeanette D. Moses, “Slug Magazine,” Jan. 21, 2010
 

HumanDocs Film Series

 
This spring Lipscomb University cooperated with the Nashville Film Festival to launch the HumanDocs Film Series, free on-campus showings of documentaries exploring social justice issues. This year’s films included Made in L.A., The Age of Stupid and Greensboro: Closer to the Truth.
 
The HumanDocs monthly film series will continue in June at the Christian Scholars' Conference with a Wednesday, June 2, showing of Burma VJ, an Oscar-nominated documentary shot secretly to expose the repressive regime control of Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar.
 
Burma VJ will show at 7 p.m. in Ward Hall on June 2, and a post-film discussion will be held including comments by American Buddist monks.