For Sulo Dissanayake ’09, the pitfalls of filmmaking came into focus when, for the course “Acting and Directing for the Camera,” she directed a scene at the Blue Goose — and then pretty much had to scrap it.

Paul Kuritz, a theater professor who is advancing film production in Bates’ curriculum, assigned the 12 students in the course to adapt and shoot a scene from a feature film. Dissanayake chose a pivotal encounter from Neil LaBute’s 2003 movie The Shape of Things. This being a wintertime course, Dissanayake brought LaBute’s outdoor scene inside, to a barroom.

“I thought the Goose would be ideal,” she says, and the management was agreeable. However, as Dissanayake explains, “I didn’t expect half the town to be at the bar on a Saturday morning. So our audio got completely screwed,” as bar hubbub obscured the actors’ dialogue.

She ended up shooting the scene on a set on campus.

Kuritz’s students in Theater 371 chose source films worthy of any Netflix queue, from the classic (Rebel Without a Cause) to the hip and funny (This Is Spinal Tap) to the teeth-clenching (Misery). As directors, they had to do it all, from logistics to running the digital video camera to guiding the actors, who were also taking the course.

Kuritz has taught Theater 371 twice. He prepared himself by taking film production courses at the Rockport, Maine, school now called the Maine Media Workshops, and made his own short in 2006. (Premiered this year, A New Life will be shown at this summer’s Bayou City Inspirational Film Festival in Texas.)

Film studies is well-established in Bates’ curriculum, and the late rhetoric professor Robert Branham taught documentary filmmaking in the 1980s and ’90s. Now, after a gap of a decade and thanks largely to Kuritz, film production is again a fixture. Since January, theater majors who meet a variety of requirements, including Theater 371 and programs off campus, have been able to work toward a senior thesis in narrative film production.

The time is ripe, Kuritz says. “More people watch films and make films than watch or make theater.”

Continuity was a key lesson, explains Lana Smithner ’10, who aimed high for her project and chose a scene from the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. For instance, as she moved the camera to capture different angles, she had to shift the set and the actors, too, so they would appear to stay in the same places.

Similarly, actors must be able to play a scene exactly the same way through different shots so that they all fit together in the editing room. “Everyone thinks that acting for the camera, you can be more natural and real,” Smithner says.

“But the big thing that we learned right off was, it’s actually the opposite, because the way shots are composed is very fake.”

Illustration by Marty Braun

Follow Me Home, directed by Peter Bratt, follows four street-smart artists — two Chicano cousins, an African American and a Native American — on a cross-country road trip. The group’s mission is to paint a mural of “vibrant colors” on the White House, but the trip soon becomes a spiritual quest when they are forced to confront conflicts within themselves and with each other.

Despite its selection as an official entry by the 1996 Sundance Festival, winning the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and its special Hollywood screening hosted by Woodard, the production was passed over by every major film distribution company in the country. Inspired by Follow Me Home, attorney and activist Henri F. Norris founded New Millenia Films to take the movie to audiences one or two cities at a time.

Spirited post-film discussions after almost every screening, led by Norris or the director and actors, created what Norris likes to think of as a “grassroots hit.” She likens the post-screening discussions to a “town meeting” on race, where “question and answer sessions allow the audiences to get involved. They don’t just go home after the credits roll. They talk about their feelings.”

Author Alice Walker called the movie “a survival film. It’s the kind of film we need to get ourselves out of the mess we’re in.” In addition to her new role as film distributor, Norris practiced law as a partner in the Dalkon Shield Joint Venture Litigation Group that pursued the multi-billion dollar product liability litigation against the manufacturer of the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device. She also founded Transcultural Communications to promote program opportunities for people of color and produced a variety of film projects, including the documentary Voices of the Civil Rights Movement. As a member of the new pantheon of African-American filmmakers, producers and distributors, Norris has been featured in a number of publications including The Village Voice, The New York Times, The Nation and Black Enterprise Magazine.

Following the film and discussion, there will be a series of workshops and presentations by visiting scholars and by Bates students, faculty and staff. Two series of concurrent workshops, the first scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. and the second from 3 to 5 p.m., take place at locations around campus. A complete schedule follows.

Concurrent Workshops I from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

• Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, assistant dean of government and community programs at the Harvard School of Public Health, leads a discussion on violence as a public health epidemic. The preeminent authority on the subject of violence in our society, Prothrow-Stith is the author of Deadly Consequences, a book based on her research. Through the Community Violence Prevention Project, she is developing a user-friendly guide Peace by Peace: A Guide for Preventing Community Violence. Location: Chase Hall Lounge.
• “Duke Ellington and the Civil Rights Movement,” by Marcus Bruce, associate professor of philosophy and religion, American cultural studies and African American studies, and Thomas Hayward, humanities reference librarian and lecturer in classics. Location: Carnegie Science 113.
• “Sacred Lies, Civil Truths”: Homophobia, Racism and Hate Referenda, convened by the art department, includes the viewing of a video concerned with a gay rights referendum in Oregon. Location: Olin Arts Center 104
• Luis Bunuel’s The Young One, convened by Baltasar Fra-Molinero, assistant professor of Spanish, features the only film Bunuel ever made in this country — in English — followed by a discussion. The film tells the story of a black musician, fleeing from the racist police in New Orleans, and a white man on one of the coastal islands, who hates him. Location: Carnegie 204
• Readings from the works of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., organized by Paula Matthews, associate librarian, and the staff of Ladd Library. All are invited to participate in this public reading of the works of the late King. Location: Ladd Library
• Marking Others: An Examination of Japan’s Oppressed Eta Minority, convened by Keiko Ofuji, an instructor in Japanese at Bates. The session includes the viewing of The River With No Bridge, a 1992 film by Yoichi Higachi, followed by a discussion centered on the singling out of minority groups for oppression. Location: Olin 105. Note: This session runs from 1 to 4 p.m.

Concurrent Workshops II from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

• A discussion about race, gender and natural sciences with Marilyn Suiter, director of education and human resources at the American Geological Association. Location: Carnegie Science 113.
• Lift Every Voice: John Preston Davis and the National Negro Congress, a 1991 film by Robert Branham, professor of speech and rhetoric, and Melissa Friedling, documents the life of a 1926 Bates College alumnus who fought for social and racial justice. A discussion with members of the history department, including Hilmar Jensen, assistant professor of history, who is interviewed in the film and recently completed a biography of Davis, will follow the film. Location: Carnegie Science 204.
• A Class Divided: A Discussion and Workshop convened by the Bates sociology department, features a documentary on the reunion of Iowa teacher Jane Elliott and her third-grade class of 1970, subjects that year of an ABC News documentary The Eye of the Storm. The film explores the lasting effect of an experimental curriculum on the evils of discrimination. Location: Coram Library 1.
• Experiencing Race in English Class: A Student-Faculty Discussion, convened by the Bates English department and the English Council. Location: Hirasawa Lounge, Chase Hall.

Also planned for Jan. 19:

• At 7 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall is a dance performance commissioned in honor of King by first-year student Zoia Cisneros of Naples. A reception follows in the lobby of Olin Arts Center.
• At 8 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Robert Branham, professor of theater and rhetoric, will present Sweet Freedom’s Song: A Multimedia Lecture and Performance.
• At 6:45 p.m. Jan. 18 in the College Chapel the Rev. Imani-Sheila Newsome-McLaughlin, dean of student life at Boston University School of Theology, delivers the annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture, with music by the Bates Community Gospel Ensemble and Cultured Voices. A reception and conversation with Newsome-MacLaughlin follow at 8 p.m. in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives.

Bates takes a special interest in events related to King because one of the civil rights leader’s mentors was the late Benjamin E. Mays, a 1920 Bates graduate. Mays was the long-time president of Morehouse College, King’s alma mater, and a lifelong adviser to King, who was assassinated in 1968. Mays delivered the eulogy at King’s funeral.

The events at Bates commemorate the birthday of King, who would have been 69 on Jan. 15. There will be no classes at Bates Jan. 19 to allow students and the rest of the college community to participate in the public events and discussions in observance of King’s birthday.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the first British intercollegiate debating tour of the United States when three members of the Oxford Union launched their expedition at Bates College, the British national team will return to compete against Bates, kicking off a nationwide tour.

Beginning in the 1960s, according to Robert Branham, associate professor of rhetoric and debate coach at Bates, Americans began to participate in free, extemporaneous debate, and within the last five years, the British style of parliamentary debate has become the most popular form in the United States. “They’re truly public debates rather than technical ones,” Branham said. “They tend to be more lively, with heckling from the audience.”

On Sept. 27, 1922, Bates debaters Arthur Pollister ’24 of Turner, William Young ’24 of Lewiston and Erwin Canham ’25 of Auburn defeated Oxford University in a match staged before a crowd of 2,500 at Lewiston City Hall. The two teams debated the proposition: “Resolved, that the United States should at once join the League of Nations.” Oxford took the affirmative and Bates argued the negative side.

Speaker of the House for this year’s contest will be Charles Radcliff ’50, who was a member of the first U.S. national debating team. Bates senior Liam D. Clarke of Grand Rapids, Minn., president of the student government and the debate council, will debate for Bates with senior Jennifer V. Clark of Mexico City, a vice president of the debate council who spent her junior year abroad at University College in London.

Following the Bates debate, the British team, represented by Dan Neidle, 24, and Andrea Sloan, 22, will continue their two-month tour throughout the United States, including stops in Boston, New York and California. A law student at the College of Law in London, Neidle will begin work as a corporate lawyer in February. He won the national school’s debating championship at age 17 and has competed successfully in national and international university debates.

Sloan, a resident of Scotland, has just finished her fifth year of law at the University of Strathclyde, where she has participated in many debate tournaments in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including three world championships.

“Bates and British debaters have enjoyed a unique and enduring debating relationship,” said Branham. Bates, under the tutelage of Craig Baird, visited Oxford for the first intercontinental collegiate debate in 1921 and debated British teams more than a dozen additional times before World War II.

After the war, Bates was the first U.S. school to resume international debate tours of Britain. Three Bates students have been selected as members of the U.S. national debating teams that have toured Great Britain, including both the first tour in 1950 and the most recent tour in 1997. Bates teams now compete in British tournaments each year.

In the first years of competition, “neither side thought a lot of the other’s way of doing things,” Branham said. “The British regarded the Americans as too lawyerly and technical in their analysis. The Americans, in turn, regarded the British as too frivolous and understated.”

Awarded annually, the prize recognizes outstanding scholarship in argumentation theory, criticism, history or practice. The AFA is an organization of 600 argumentation scholars from six countries.

Branham was also recently named the Eastern States Representative to the Committee for International Discussion and Debate (CIDD) by the Speech Communication Asociation, a 5,000-member international organization of communication scholars.

CIDD, a five member committee that selects the U.S. national debating team each year and organizes and sponsors national debating tours in Russia, Great Britain, Japan and Israel. The organization also arranges for annual tours of the United States by the national teams of these countries.

Branham heads an intercollegiate debate program at Bates that is recognized as one of the best in the United States. He also teaches a course on documentary filmmaking that has produced such notable efforts as Roughing the Uppers: The Great Shoe Strike of 1937 and The Phantom Punch, about the heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston in 1965.

The author of a number of scholarly articles and editor of several handbooks and tutoring aids for debaters, he graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College and earned master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of North Carolina and the University of Massachusetts respectively. He joined the Bates faculty in 1974.