Allison Walsh, a 2012 graduate of Prospect High School, will see her documentary, All of the Above, showcased today at the Milwaukee Film Festival. As the featured film, it airs in the festival’s main theater that seats 1,000 people. And that’s just the start of a string of film festivals across the country where her film is entered.
The documentary follows Walsh’s former teacher, John Camardella, and Prospect’s long-running World Religions course. The experience left a lasting impression on Walsh and ultimately inspired her career as a documentary filmmaker.
“I had a pretty profound experience in John’s World Religions class when I was a high school senior,” Walsh says. “It opened up my world and revealed something inside of me, a passion for learning about different perspectives.”
Camardella began teaching the World Religions course in the Social Studies department at Prospect, in 2009. It continues to be one of the most popular electives in the school. This year, he teaches five sections each day, or 140 students per semester, in a course that is dual-credited through Eastern Illinois University.
John Camardella talks to students in class.
Camardella says the course is really about trying to create a unique learning space while furthering cultural and religious literacy in young people.
“What makes this class resonate right now is that our Prospect students are growing up in a world where they’re constantly encountering differences, whether religious, cultural or political,” Camardella says, “but they don’t often have the tools to make sense of it.”
Walsh’s documentary takes viewers inside Camardella’s classroom over the course of the semester, as she tried to make herself a fly on the wall, capturing students’ questions and observations. She credits her time as an intern with Kartemquin Films in Chicago — the organization that made Hoop Dreams — with giving her the tools to make the documentary, including everything from pre-production and editing, to recording sound in a classroom.
Allison Walsh takes questions from the press at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
Capturing the students’ engagement in the classroom is key to the film’s success, since through Camardella’s guidance they see that understanding different faith traditions is a work in progress.
“Over time, I see students move from speaking in generalizations to asking more nuanced questions and recognizing the complexity in one another’s perspectives,” Camardella says.
Walsh always knew she wanted to make a documentary about Camardella and the class, and when she did, it took nearly six years to complete. She premiered the film in February at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival — which is an Oscar-qualifying festival — when she and Camardella walked the red carpet.
John Camardella and Allison Walsh at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
“My goal was to amplify the work that my former teacher is doing, because I’m sure people from the outside often wonder what it looks like to talk about religion in a public school day to day,” Walsh says. “So with this film, we provide that inside look into the classroom, and also spend time with the teenagers as they’re coming of age and figuring out who they want to be as they’re leaving high school. We wanted to see the whole experience.”
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