What Can Documentary Film Teach Us About Justice?

Within the discipline of Christian theology, I am currently working on:

1. Virtue ethics, particularly practical strategies for the formation of students as wise thinkers and good leaders able to contribute to the common good

2. Freedom, what virtues are required for the flourishing of highly-educated, cosmopolitan young people who experience a degree of freedom unknown in human history

3. Culture and the arts, particularly a theology of documentary cinema, what can theologians / Christians learn from documentary practice and vice versa

Given the interests listed above, connections and questions relating to the excellent Theology Brief on Justice would include:

1. If justice is about ‘interactions between human beings’ then the ‘actors’ or the ‘agents’ are clearly important, opening up an interesting question: What virtues might be necessary to underwrite the ability to interact justly – honesty, humility, gratitude?

2. What might an artform such as documentary cinema, often explicitly concerned with questions of justice, contribute to our discussion of this important topic?