Particularly in an election year, social justice is a theme many filmmakers strive to address. Twenty-eight-year-old independent filmmaker Edford Banuel, of Atlanta, is one such filmmaker. His short films, Unjust Cause and Land of the Free, are being shown at 7 tonight in HUB Heritage Hall.
Unjust Cause is a fictional film inspired by the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant who was shot 41 times by New York City police officers. Banuel submitted the $7,000 film to the Showtime Black Filmmaker Showcase in February 2003. Banuel received top honors from the competition and used the $30,000 grant he received as a reward to finance his next film, Land of the Free, another fictional film based on actual events.
"After 9/11, a relative and I went out to a restaurant," he said. "We had an Arab waiter. My relative asked him about his views on the tragedy and how the Arab-American community had been affected, and the waiter then told us a story."
Banuel said he was amazed by what the young man described to him, about how he and his friends were subjected to instances of hatred and were even involved in a physical altercation, simply because of their ethnicity.
"I thought to myself, 'This can be a very interesting story,' " Banuel said.
After hearing about this incident, Banuel contacted several Arab-American anti-discrimination organizations and found similar occurrences.
"It just baffled me that there were so many cases," Banuel said. "Discrimination in the workplace, discrimination in airports, physical attacks on the night of 9/11."
Banuel said that although Land of the Free tells a story that might be uncomfortable for some viewers to witness, it is an important story.
"I started noticing that when an Arab-American walked by, whatever other ethnicity you happen to be, you look twice," he said. "As a filmmaker, I try to look at myself as a reporter in a sense, putting the information out there to challenge the audience's perspective. I don't want to put my impression on others. I want people to make their own decisions."
James Stewart, a Penn State professor of labor studies and industrial relations and African and African-American studies, feels it would be beneficial for students to watch the films.
"If you look at the themes [of the films], they focus on the need for understanding people from different cultural backgrounds and not jumping to conclusions," Stewart said. "Penn State has continuing issues related to perceptions of African-Americans, those in the [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community, and those from other communities that have, at times, not been treated respectfully."
Banuel said although his films contain politically and socially relevant content, he is not exclusively a political filmmaker.
"I definitely want to tell stories from the African-American perspective," he said. "But I also don't want to pigeonhole myself, because most of all, I just want to tell good stories."
Lawrence Young, director of the Paul Robeson Cultural Center, agreed there is a two-fold benefit to seeing Banuel's films.
First, Young said, students get a chance to be introduced to the films of an up-and-coming, young director. Secondly, the films have a social importance.
"[The films] are thought-provoking," Young said. "Banuel wants people to think about things that are happening in society."
