The New Media Club held a screening of "Ultimate Christian Wrestling" Nov. 21, which was attended by director Jae-Ho Chang.
The film was a documentary, which chronicled the lives of three men who practiced ultimate wrestling to evangelize in rural Georgia.
Both comical and heart-wrenching, the film documented the human struggles of the three men to better their lives.
"I hope it opens eyes to people and I think the way we structure this film is like how we saw these people," Chang said. "First you look at them and you're kind of judgmental and think what's going on but then you slowly realize there's a commonality between the wrestlers and yourself and that you start sympathizing with these people and you have empathy. So I want to change people's perspective. Not everyone is what you see."
The film was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2007 Tribeca All-Access Creative Promise Award and the Best Documentary Feature and the Programmer's Award for Artistic Vision at the New Orleans Film Festival in 2012.
Chang first heard about ultimate Christian wrestling on a radio sport's section where it was mentioned as a joke.
Chang then googled the Ultimate Christian Wrestling, UCW, group and contacted them.
"I was in graduate school at the time for film with it mind we went down there with our cameras and kind of started shooting this bizarre Americana culture kind of out of curiosity," Chang said. "Then we got there and we started digging into why they do it and you find out a lot of them have really difficult lives so they become this superhero on the weekends where they can forget about everything and people cheer for them."
"Ultimate Christian Wrestling" took Chang seven years, four of which were spent editing the footage, to complete his first feature length film.
"You don't know where it's going to go story wise because it's not like a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end," Chang said. "That's why it took three years of filming."
Alessio Summerfield, senior in radio, television and film, first met Chang at a film festival in New Orleans where he had gone to pitch films.
"We came and saw the movie because there was a poster that had a luchador that said ultimate Christian wrestling in colorful colors in the middle of nowhere New Orleans and we were just like yes please so we came to the film," Summerfield said. "Overall, I think it is one of the most genuine docs I've ever seen and so I really liked it a lot."
When Summerfield heard Chang was doing a Kickstarter project to fund the last touches of the film, he offered his assistance.
"I went out of my way to help him as best I could and sent emails out all over the state and Georgia so they met their goal and so after that I went to Athens to see the finished version and he decided to come to Auburn," Summerfield said.
Ethan Coggin, junior in software engineering, also enjoyed the film.
"I thought it was good, not just the movie, but the additional perspective I got from being here and listening to the director himself," Coggin said.
Currently, Chang is working on a feature script and said the writing process has been difficult.
"Writing is so hard and lonely," Chang said. "That's why documentaries are fun."
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