EMC Assistant Professor Allie Sultan (right) with the subject of her documentary short, Jenny Lutkins.
Assistant Professor Allie Sultan with the Department of Electronic Media Communication presented her film “Lift Like a Girl”on March 23 in the KUC Theater as part of MTSU National Women’s History Month.
The seven-minute documentary short follows Jenny Lutkins, a 40 year-old mom in Tennessee whose journey back to health involves her participation in the sport of Olympic weightlifting. Her training changes the way she thinks about beauty and strength.
Sultan made the film as part of the Fusion International Documentary Challenge, an international competition where filmmakers make a short documentary in five days that is four to seven minutes in length. “Lift” premiered in January 2016 at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Since then, the film has won the grand jury prize for Best Tennessee Documentary short at the 2016 Nashville Film Festival and was nominated for the Tennessee Horizon Audience award. It also won the Audience Award for the Fusion International Documentary Challenge, an online competition where registered voters watch and choose their favorite film.
Sultan answered questions after the film’s MTSU screening and talked about the impact her film brings to viewers.
“I’m thrilled to add to the dialogue on women’s issues on campus and in the world,” Sultan said.
A graduate of the MFA-Cinema program at San Francisco State University, Sultan has worked as a sound and picture editor with some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s finest film companies. Her narrative and documentary films focus on women’s experience and LGBT identity/politics and have screened in more than 60 film festivals worldwide. Sultan freelances as a video producer/editor through her company, Green Scoot Films, and teaches film/video production, editing and web series production at MTSU.
To learn more about Sultan’s film, click here.
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