Listen to this articleMore than 12,000 middle and high school students in Utah will be shown the film, BULLY, as part of an awareness campaign to stop bullying in schools. The program is sponsored by the Utah Film Center, Salt Lake City School District and JPMorgan Chase.
More than 13 million American schoolchildren will be bullied this year, making it the most common form of violence experienced by young people. Beginning on Sept. 11, the screenings will take place in Salt Lake City and Park City.
BULLY follows the lives of five students who face bullying on a daily basis. On Sept. 12 and 13, one of the subjects of the documentary, Alex Libby, will join students for a post-film question and answer session.
These screenings are also part of The Bully Project’s “1 Million Kids” initiative that is striving to show the film to 1 million students with the goal of shifting the consciousness and eliminating bullying on school campuses.
“The Utah Film Center is dedicated to supporting this anti-bulling campaign in youth communities at large throughout the state,” said Holly Yocom, executive director of the Utah Film Center.
The documentary film BULLY, directed by Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker Lee Hirsch, brings human scale to this startling statistic, offering an intimate, unflinching look at how bullying has touched five kids and their families. Filmed over the course of the 2009-2010 school year, BULLY opens a window onto the pained and often endangered lives of bullied kids, revealing a problem that transcends geographic, racial, ethnic and economic borders.
More details about all of our upcoming events and membership can be found at UtahFilmCenter.org.
Have you seen the film yet?
Good! Then again, in Utah it'll probably be used as a "how to" video.