Orlando Bagwell’s latest film, 3 1/2 Minutes, premieres at Sundance

3 1/2 Minutes dissects the 2012 killing of Jordan Davis and the “stand your ground” law in Florida that the 17-year-old’s death put under a microscope.

The scope of 3 1/2 Minutes is as broad as the challenge of American racial bias, but with Bagwell as executive producer, it’s also deeply personal. As the Sundance program reads: “While Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown’s stories join a wretched, enduring cycle in the American social narrative, 3 1/2 Minutes portrays Davis’s murder and its aftermath as anything but generic. Instead, the intimate camera particularizes each character as singular, as if to say: the more we see each other as human beings, the less inevitable will be violent outcomes from racial bias and disparate cultures colliding.”

Bagwell’s students are being asked, too, to see things differently. Reflecting on his first week with them, Bagwell said, “I’ve always felt documentary filmmaking is lifelong learning. Every issue, every story requires research and an open desire to learn. It is exciting and challenging, never boring.”

He senses that desire at the J-School already.

“Being in a school where students and faculty are not only learning from one another in the class room but also actively engaged in creative work is exciting. That energy and curiosity is alive in the J-School. And it is exciting.”

Following the premiere on Saturday, Jan. 24, the Sundance Film Festival scheduled four more chances to see 3 1/2 Minutes. Screenings continue this week: at 6 p.m. Monday at Broadway Centre Cinema 6, at 10 p.m. Thursday at Holiday Village Cinema 4, and at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Library Center Theatre.