 "Photo: Ashley Inguanta")
Almost every student has had a class that leaves them fleeing campus faster than a swine flu scare — a class where the homework is tedious and the textbook is more potent than Tylenol PM.
The Advanced Documentary Production class taught by the Zora Neale Hurston Institute for Documentary Studies at UCF strives to be the opposite of that kind of class. The institute was named for Hurston, a folklorist from Eatonville, Fla., best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
“It was a neat way to bridge a textbook into a reality – a theory into practice,” said theatre graduate student Kerri Alexander, 23, who took the class previously. "It helped to enhance the college experience.”
The class incorporates all of the necessary aspects of creating a documentary: research, concept creation, interviewing, writing, editing, performing, filming, editing and product presentation.
“What we end up with is a professional project that we can air and compete in film festivals with,” said Anthony Major, professor and director of the Zora Neale Hurston Institute.
The class researches and creates a documentary surrounding an aspect of Hurston's personal life.
“They become experts in that part of Zora’s life,” Major said.
This creative class in culture is offered to all students on campus.
“I think it is the most interdisciplinary class on campus,” Major said. “The students get to learn what the other students do.”
The class is home to students with majors in film, communication, political science, education, history, theatre and women’s studies.
“It’s a great learning opportunity for everyone,” Alexander said.
The class this semester is being co-taught by Valada Parker Flewellyn of Orlando who wrote Poetically Just Us.
“I’m very excited about the class because of the students,” Flewellyn said. “Because of their immediate and obvious interest in Zora.”
One of their first assignments this semester includes the class reading Hurston's work.
“They have seemed to fallen in love with Zora,” Flewellyn said.
Next up on the agenda is reading and critiquing Flewellyn's book.
“I am a little nervous to be honest,” Flewellyn said. “To have young students review my work 20 years after I wrote it makes me nervous.”
The students are expected to convey what they learned from Flewellyn's writing in the documentary.
“The documentary shows insight [on the book] based on students’ perspectives,” Major said.
Flewellyn laughs while describing her fear of the student's opinions.
"When you choose to write that is the choice you make though,” Flewellyn said. "That your ideas are out there and that they might haunt you one day.”
The class also entails several guest speakers throughout the semester and collaborates with the annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities in Eatonville.
In a few weeks, Hurston's niece and nephew will talk about their experiences with the community and the festival, Major said.
"If Zora lived today they would be the people she was enamored with,” Flewellyn said.
The final documentary allows the students to connect with their audience.
"I had never done a documentary before; my background was in television news so this class was very different,” Alexander said. “You get people to connect with the story.
“It is more than just fact giving,” Alexander said.
The final documentary, although inspired by Hurston and Flewellyn, is a creative collaboration of the students enrolled in the course.
“This is not mine or Zora’s day — it is theirs,” Flewellyn said. “We will get a chance to hear young voices looking at our world.”
Once the documentary is created it will be aired on UCF TV, Bright House Networks Digital Cable Channel 1, WBCC and YouTube.
“It exposes UCF nationwide through television,” Major said.
The class will also attempt to further expose UCF's creative piece with library exhibition contracts for their documentary, Major said.
“I think what we are doing at UCF is a big step in defining what it is to be an American today,” Flewellyn said.
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