At first, the almost 400 students in the Little Theater at Mount St. Mary's College's Chalon campus giggled at almost anything the "cool" college-age narrator of the homegrown documentary "Invisible Children" said.

They laughed as the young USC filmmakers tried to explain on camera the "grand adventure" they were undertaking to Africa, a continent some of them actually thought was one humongous nation. They cracked up when the filmmakers got to Kenya and couldn't find a single African to interview.

But the coed crowd hushed when the documentary zeroed in on the squalor of a refugee camp in northern Uganda, showing close-ups of little kids with bloated bellies and flies swarming around their faces.

And when the young filmmakers were taken at dusk to a bus depot, where the narrator explained there were "thousands and thousands of kids without an adult in sight," the theater went suddenly silent as the camera panned the dirty, frightened faces.

For the next 50 minutes, students watched overpowering images of children and teens huddled together on the ground around the depot and a hospital as the narrator, his glibness gone now, explained the daily realities of this divided nation that has been fighting a civil war so long nobody could recall how it actually started.

The voiceover told how these children leave their villages every evening for the relative safety of a town to keep from being kidnapped and forced into the rebel army.

The Mount St. Mary's students listened to children named Jacob, Thomas, Bony and Tony being interviewed about what it was like to be forcibly recruited into the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), and then the looting, raping and killing they had to do just to survive.

After the Oct. 26 screening, one of the filmmakers, Bobby Bailey, came on stage to answer questions. And for the next 30 minutes, students peppered him with one query after another: "What inspired you to go to Africa?" "What were you trying to do there?" "Were you afraid? "What can someone like me do to stop this?"

Raising awareness

Which is just the reaction Pam Bruns, co-director of the Mount St. Mary's College Human Rights Film Festival, sponsored by the Documentary Film and Social Justice Program, wanted to hear.

"What distinguishes this film festival from others is that we always have an immediate opportunity for students to do advocacy," said the lecturer, who teaches a class called Advocacy and Human Rights. "Like tonight, there are tables outside where they can sign petitions to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the president of Uganda to stop the conflict in northern Uganda and its devastating impact on children, plus we've got another petition to President Bush to halt the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

"The film festival is to try to raise awareness for these human rights issues and abuses. Then the advocacy gives viewers an opportunity to participate in a positive way to end those abuses. And documentary film is such a powerful medium to get people charged up. Hundreds of students signed the petitions."

Tad Chamberlain, the film festival's other co-director, says "Invisible Children" definitely affected its viewers.

"It's a great film. Young filmmakers. The kids really connect to it," said the Media Programming teacher. "Because these were young kids making a movie, going out there and making a difference."

"The purpose is to get the students to think about the world around them, and to learn something about the world around them," he pointed out. "But also to actually get involved in making a difference. And, hopefully, that then carries on beyond once they leave our campus."

Senior Sarah Bessell thought "Invisible Children," rough cut and all, was excellent for her generation.

"The reason why this film is so engaging is because it comes from a young person's standpoint," she said. "Young people kind of journey from ignorance to shock to awareness to anger to wanting to do something. And I really like that."

As a college activist and advocate, she struggles daily with the apathy around her. Students are always asking why should they care about people in Africa, Asia or even pockets of poverty in the United States like Appalachia. So she's constantly looking for "hooks" or entry points to get others involved in today's social justice tragedies.

"And this documentary is a perfect tool," the 21-year-old political science and philosophy major said. "It's rough and it's kind of uncut. But in doing so, it makes it more accessible to students who maybe don't want to see what's really going on in Africa.

"Every generation needs that thing to latch on to," she stressed. "Like in the '50s, you had civil rights; in the '90s, you had apartheid. And we don't have something to latch on to. With pieces like this documentary, people of our generation are starting to find their place and finding their advocacy."

Bessell and other MSMC students also raised more than $1,200 for relief efforts in northern Uganda.