Brad Barber Shares Filmmaking Experience in Faith and Works Lecture

BYU film professor Brad Barber shares “50 STATES/50 STORIES: Finding Empathy Through Filmmaking” at the February Faith and Works Lecture. Barber is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and was named to Variety magazine’s “10 Documakers to Watch” list in 2015 after the success of the PBS film “Peace Officer,” which he directed, shot and produced together with Scott Christopherson. After graduating from BYU in 2001, Barber received an MFA in Cinema-Television production from the University of Southern California in 2005. Barber continued to work in LA on a variety of documentary film and television projects for HBO, ESPN, Showtime and others. Barber joined the faculty of BYU’s Theatre and Media Arts Department in 2007. His remarks at the February lecture will focus on the experiences he’s had while filming his latest documentary project “States of America,” a series of lyrical documentary shorts featuring one person in each of the 50 United States as they explore a literal and spiritual sense of connection to the place they call home. From 2009-2016, Barber collaborated with several students to film and produce a series of short documentaries for KBYU Eleven. The project was called “Beehive Stories” and highlighted one person from each of the 29 counties in Utah as well as Utah’s five national parks. Using the skills and experience from the statewide documentaries, Barber started on his nationwide project. “Making movies about real, living people is a sacred act. It has always carried heavy responsibilities,” Barber said. “Inevitably, both making and watching these films can nourish our sense of shared humanity, even in an increasingly divided country.” A summary of his lecture can be found here on the CFAC website.