AN ARMY RISING UP

Drawing from intimate interviews with high school students and educators in the Mississippi Delta, student shot footage, and archival material, An Army Rising Up is a short documentary that follows the journey of twenty-two high schoolers from the Mississippi Delta, as they participate in the Delta Filmmaking Academy at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi. In addition to learning professional filmmaking techniques, students studied and discussed Civil Rights history, and explored their communities’ connections to the historical legacies of Delta Civil Rights icons Emmett Till and Fannie Lou Hamer. The Academy culminated in the production of a documentary project that reveals what the students learned, and expresses their unique, first-hand, and place-based points of view about how racial barriers continue to affect the lives of young people in the region today.