If you walk through the Birmingham airport during the next year, you might run across a small theater on the secure side of the terminal. Inside, an Emmy-nominated film called Whitman, Alabama is playing on a loop.
The film features everyday Alabamians reciting verses from Walt Whitman’s famous 19th-century poem, “Song of Myself.” While the film debuted in 2017, it’s an ongoing project, and leaders of the Birmingham Airport Authority said it’s a perfect way to celebrate the United States’ 250th birthday.
“Alabama is not separate from the American story, and its history contains some of the biggest contradictions in our country's history,” said Ashby Pate, who chairs the airport authority’s board of directors, during a reception launching the exhibit earlier this month. “And Whitman was a man of great contradictions, and he celebrated those things.”
Parts of the reception were similar to a family reunion, as people featured in the documentary saw filmmakers, and – in some cases – each other for the first time in years. Several participants reflected on the lines they recorded more than 10 years ago.
Zaniah Ball caught up with other former members of the Creative Mindz dance crew, a youth dance nonprofit that used to operate in Birmingham. She was 13 years old a decade ago, when videographers shot scenes of the dancers practicing amid the crumbling concrete of a skate park next to a raised interstate highway, with downtown Birmingham’s skyline in the distance.
In the film, Ball often knits her brow, trying to understand Verse 21 of Whitman’s poem as she speaks it. Her fellow crew members dance around her.
She said the words make sense to her now, and watching the film today makes her realize how much time has passed.
“We've all grown up, so it's different to see us in those videos,” Ball said. “That was a long time ago.”
Group members say back then, they were confused about what exactly the project was and were surprised it got so much attention. But now, Mya Skeete said, she feels like the crew accomplished something important.
“I didn't know it was going to be seen everywhere across the world, so it's kind of amazing, and shocking to be a part of something like this,” Skeete said. “So, I'm pretty proud of myself and everybody else.”
Muriel Tarver, who organized the dance crew and is the mother of one member, said the filming gave them an outlet – a way to focus on something besides the tough issues in their personal lives.
“They didn't come together to do a project that got nominated for an Emmy,” Tarver said. “They came together because they cared about each other.”
One of the difficult situations crew members faced involved Ball’s mother. She died in 2016, and the Creative Mindz verse of the film is dedicated to her.
Tragedy persisted after the film debuted. One of the crew’s youngest members, Hayden Hocutt, was only 10 when scenes were filmed, and he died in 2019. His family was at the reception. His grandmother, Sandy Hocutt, said the film provides an especially meaningful connection for her now.
“I can still see him dance, and I can still hear him talk,” she said. “Had I known my time with him was so short, I would have saved all of his voicemails and all of his recordings, and I didn't save any of them.”
Each of the 26 short films that make up the project features a person or people doing things they normally do – hobbies, work or just sitting on their porch. Their assigned verses often correlate with what was happening in their lives at the time.
Curtia Torbert is an actor whose face towers above the entrance to the exhibit’s theater. The filmmakers recorded her, then 23 years old, on a stage in Montgomery. She read the same lines over and over, but with different emotions as she followed a director’s cues.
At the reception, Torbert said she’s grown up a lot since then, and the project speaks to her differently now.
“I think I have more mature eyes when hearing the words, and I feel really grateful to be able to experience the same words, but a different feeling then versus now,” she said.
Torbert said the film’s current tie to the nation’s 250th birthday speaks to the flexibility and beauty of both the poem and the project.
“It really represents not only Alabamians, but kind of creatively represents the United States – how we're all different,” she said. “It speaks about love for the country, or love for your fellow man, and Alabama is like the pinnacle of Southern hospitality.”
Project director Jennifer Crandall has lived all over the world and said Alabama immediately captivated her. She said the state occupies a place in the American psyche that can be falsely one-dimensional.
“If you look hard enough, you'll find ways that, if you're from Minnesota, that you connect with someone in Alabama,” she said. “If you look really hard at any one individual or any one place, in this case Alabama, you'll see the world. And so I just thought Alabama was a good place to sort of prove that out.”
Crandall emphasized that the project isn’t complete. She said her team hopes to find support to finish the final leg. There are still 26 verses to go.
