Hazing, from award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt, offers a nuanced and deeply personal look inside the culture of hazing on America’s college campuses. In the film, Hurt, a member of a fraternity himself, talks to families of young people who died from hazing, survivors, and fellow fraternity brothers in Black and historically white Greek-letter organizations. Expertly weaving these moving first-hand testimonies with insights from hazing and violence-prevention experts and campus professional staff, Hazing provides an empathetic and at times heartbreaking portrait of a culture that confers a sense of belonging even as it too often leads to violence, sexual degradation, binge drinking, institutional coverups, and debased notions of manhood. The film also situates the troubling individual and group behaviors associated with hazing within broader historical, institutional, social, and cultural contexts. Hazing is an extraordinary resource for educators and advocates working to reform hazing culture and combat campus violence, especially those interested in bystander-based violence prevention and larger issues of race, gender, identity, alienation, and belonging.

Run time: 87 min. 
Date Produced: 2022
Subtitles: English

Credits

Filmmaker Bio
Byron Hurt is an award-winning filmmaker, activist, lecturer, and leader in the gender-violence prevention field. His highly acclaimed documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on the PBS documentary series Independent Lens. His film Soul Food Junkies, which also aired nationally on PBS, won best documentary at several film festivals. In 2010, he hosted the Emmy-nominated television show Reel Works with Byron Hurt. In addition, Byron has over two decades of experience working with NCAA athletes, members of the U.S. military, fraternities, and everyday men and women throughout the world on bystander-based, gender-violence prevention. His lectures on the topic focus on how hypermasculinity in popular culture normalizes male violence; how commonalities between race, class, and gender link oppression; how homophobia and transphobia make LGBT communities vulnerable to male violence; how positive male leadership and bystander intervention can end gender-based violence; and how to use cis male privilege to ally with women and girls to redefine masculinity and promote healthy relationships. Byron also serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University, was a filmmaker-in-residence at American University, and has been featured in leading media outlets from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Source to CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BET, and ABC World News Tonight.