University of Alabama hosts work-in-progress documentary screening and discussion

Alabama filmgoers will get a rare look at a documentary before the final cut, as the University of Alabama prepares a work-in-progress screening and discussion that puts the creative process front and center. The free event will run Tuesday, April 14, from 4 to 6 p.m. in Maxwell Hall, where John Haley and co-producer Darlene St. Clair will discuss their in-progress film “Empire Builder” before showing an excerpt.

That structure matters for anyone following independent nonfiction in Alabama. Instead of arriving as a finished festival title, the project will be presented while questions are still alive: what belongs in the story, which voices carry the most weight, and how a film about a long rail corridor turns personal testimony into a larger argument about the country. The screening format also gives viewers a chance to hear the filmmakers talk through the choices behind the work, the kind of feedback moment that can shape a documentary long before public release.

UA’s Collaborative Arts Research Initiative describes “Empire Builder” as a feature-length documentary that constructs a “fractured American identity” along a 2,000-mile train journey. The film follows Amtrak’s Empire Builder route from Chicago to Seattle, tracing “patchwork truths” and differing understandings of American mythos through personal testimonies from people living along the line. That makes the project feel rooted in place and movement at once, with the rail line serving as both subject and structure.

Haley, who is a Collaborative Arts Research Initiative fellow and assistant professor of creative media, has built his documentary practice around the intersection of personal identity and societal structures. His College of Communication & Information Sciences bio says his work uses documentary storytelling to examine how social policies and systems shape individual human lives. UA also lists him as part of the 2023-2025 CARI faculty fellows cohort, a detail that helps situate “Empire Builder” inside the university’s research-driven creative work.

St. Clair, identified on the event listing as an Indigenous Research Professor at the University of Minnesota, joins Haley as co-producer for the discussion and screening. The pairing underscores the project’s academic and collaborative frame, while the public, no-cost setting opens the room beyond campus. For aspiring local documentarians, that combination of early-stage footage, artist conversation and open access makes the April 14 event more than a preview. It is a live look at how a documentary gets built.

UA has used public documentary screenings before, including its Documenting Justice series, which featured student films focused on justice and injustice in Alabama. This latest screening continues that model in Maxwell Hall, treating documentary not just as an end product but as an active exchange between filmmakers, research and the audience watching the story take shape.