In 2022, University of Massachusetts professor and filmmaker Kate Way had just finished teaching her course on the politics of K-12 education, which included a unit on book banning, when she traveled to South Carolina to find the subject of her next documentary—resulting in “Banned Together,” which she screened at Smith on April 17.
During her trip, Way went to Beaufort, South Carolina, where students in Beaufort County were dealing with heavy book bans. “I just kind of went with an exploratory sense to see what was happening and discovered a community where almost 100 books had just been pulled from the schools. And being someone who loves making documentary films and cares about these issues, I immediately was like, ‘Yes, this is an incredible story, and we have to tell it,’” Way said.
Way began filming three Beaufort high school students who opposed the bans at their local school board meetings. Soon after, a Charleston-based production company offered funding and collaboration, enabling her to expand the project from a short film into a feature-length documentary.
“We were able to really follow this local story in Beaufort, South Carolina, and follow these teenagers who were who were standing up against the book bans, and then kind of extrapolate out to how this is playing out nationally, and the political forces behind it,” Way said.
“Banned Together” follows three Beaufort high schoolers initially working with the Diversity Awareness Youth Literary Organization (DAYLO), which is based in Beaufort and was founded to encourage empathy in teenagers through reading diverse literature. As book bans in Beaufort attacked diverse texts, students and mentors involved in DAYLO began to speak out against them at school board meetings and recruited new students concerned about the legislation. Way documented the students as their activism, originating at Beaufort school board meetings, carried them to literary festivals, protests, and to speak with politicians and authors like Jodi Picoult, whose novel “Nineteen Minutes” was banned in Beaufort county schools.
Though Way was able to follow the students from the very beginning of the issues in Beaufort, she had trouble incorporating supporters of the book bans. “We had a lot of difficulty getting book banning proponents to speak with us. We tried really hard in the film to at least get their side of the story […] we did get a few people to speak with us, but largely the major players weren’t willing to do on-camera interviews with us,” she said.
Way still captured public board speeches backing the bans and condemning certain books, finding them painful to witness in person. “The political climate is, of course, very difficult to witness, and particularly in a state like South Carolina, which has some of the most stringent legislation around [books] which has gotten even worse since we completed the film,” Way said. “It’s sort of a double edged sword: how inspiring it is to see people standing up against it, but also how difficult it is to see the lengths to which people are trying to censor information in the state.”
As soon as the film was finished, Way began to screen it publicly across the country before it was officially released in order to encourage people to think and talk about the issue, which remains pertinent. Following her screenings Way encouraged audience discussions and circulated a feedback form.
At the screenings she was able to attend, Way noticed how the film impacted one group in particular: educators. “We’ve had teachers and librarians in tears after, after watching […] I believe [they] feel really seen and really kind of validated and honored in a way that doesn’t often happen in national press,” she said.
Way was able to resonate with the educators in her audiences as she was a high school English teacher for the first half of her career and taught at Northampton High School for many years, a perspective she felt informed her as she created the documentary. “Part of what was driving me as I was making this film was knowing exactly what it means to be a classroom teacher,” she said.
Beyond her residence in the Northampton community, another factor brought Way to screen “Banned Together” at Smith: activist Julia Garnett ’28. Garnett, who fought book bans in her high school community in Nashville, Tennessee, makes a small cameo in the credits sequence of “Banned Together” where she instructs student activists to not let adults silence them. After Way realized that Garnett was attending Smith, the pair worked together to bring the film to Smith.
Following the Smith screening, Way, Garnett and children’s author Grace Lin participated in a Q&A moderated by Smith professor Naila Moreira. “We have very different perspectives: author, student, filmmaker/professor, and so we’re all kind of coming together to share our experiences […] But I think we were also learning from each other as well,” Garnett said of the conversation.
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