Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Whitman College senior Ben Kegan received an early graduation gift when New York Magazine recently ranked his film, “Team Taliban,” as one of the top five short films at this spring’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Bilge Ebiri, a filmmaker and film critic for New York Magazine, said in a recent review, referring to the five short films, “This is some of the most exciting filmmaking you’ll see this year.”

“Team Taliban” screened at Tribeca after recent showings at two of the nation’s most prestigious film festivals — American Film Institute Dallas, which featured films created by such names as producers Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, director Gillermo Arriage and actor Charlize Theron; and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the nation’s oldest independent film festival, which launched the careers of such directors as Ken Burns and Michael Moore.

Kegan, a rhetoric and film studies major, filmed at locations throughout the east coast and mid-west last summer. The resulting documentary focuses on real-life Adeel Alam, a Muslim-American wrestler on the “B” circuit who plays the role of a terrorist in the ring. Alam is a devout Muslim who is conflicted between his faith and his love of wrestling — between the image his terrorist character projects to the crowd and the image Alam wants the world to have of him.

“In Kegan’s hands, what might have been an exercise in snark becomes, instead, an incisive look at how Alam navigates his character through the weird make-believe world of pro wrestling in a post-9/11 America,” Ebiri wrote.

Reaction to the film has been “pretty positive,” Kegan reports. But he said the best part of the festivals have been the opportunity to connect with other filmmakers who are just as passionate as he is about this art form. Kegan plans to move to New York after graduation, find work in the industry, go to film school, and try to cultivate a filmmaking career.

Kegan, from the Chicago area, said he decided to attend Whitman because it offered the opportunity for him to work on his craft, but also because it was so much more than a film school. He could take other courses that would influence his films. He gives the example of a class taken, Critical Race Theory, which influenced the making of Team Taliban.

Robert Sickels, associate professor of rhetoric and film studies at Whitman, said he’s sure Kegan will be a major well-known filmmaker some day.

– Virginia Grantier