Independent Lens
Soul Food Junkies
To many African Americans, soul food is a part of cultural identity. But does this cuisine do more harm to health than it soothes the soul?
Hazing
Hazing is Byron Hurt's deeply personal journey exploring the sometimes deadly rituals of belonging fueled by tradition, secrecy, groupthink, power, and the desire to fit in.
- Series
- Independent Lens
- Premiere Date
- September 12, 2022
- Length
- 84:17 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Series and Special Projects
Director
Byron Hurt
Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, writer, activist, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. His acclaimed documentaries Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes and Soul Food Junkies premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens. Byron’s latest film Hazing premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and will air on Independent Lens.
Producer
Natalie Bullock Brown
Natalie Bullock Brown is an award-winning producer, an assistant teaching professor in interdisciplinary studies at North Carolina State University, a 2021 Rockwood Institute JustFilms Fellow, and a proud member of the Documentary Accountability Working Group.
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The Film
Hazing is a widespread, far-reaching practice fueled by tradition, secrecy, groupthink, power, and the desire to belong in fraternities and sororities on college campuses and throughout institutions across the U.S. Through the voices of hazing survivors, family members, perpetrators, and scholars, Hazing reveals a variety of underground rituals that are abusive, and sometimes deadly. Reckoning with his own traumatic experiences as both a hazing survivor and perpetrator, filmmaker Byron Hurt embarks on a deeply personal journey beyond his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., to understand the intersecting roles that power, gender, race, dominance, and control play in the violent lengths college students and others will go to fit in.
