Although Case Western Reserve University football player James Barrett-Mills has been lining up on the offensive side of the ball, he gets his defensive licks in by tackling real world problems off the field-and on film.

Barrett-Mills, a sophomore psychology major who has been a receiver on the Spartans football squad, doubles as a filmmaker in his spare time.

During a recent visit to Ireland in 2002, Barrett-Mills, who is of full Irish lineage, followed around a Belfast taxi driver who talked for two hours about the 700-year history of the Catholic-Protestant conflict in the city and his goals for a resolution.

"I saw so much stuff going on over in Ireland," Barrett-Mills said. "I just wanted to capture it. The conflict is something that a lot of people in this country don't know about.

"It was amazing, the things I caught on tape," he added.

When Barrett-Mills got back to the states, he pieced his footage together into an hour-long documentary. He is thinking about distributing the documentary among film festivals but for now has put that project on hold in order to work on another piece.

This film, his second, also has family ties. Barrett-Mills' godmother is Sioux (Native American), while her husband is Choctaw and a member of the Choctaw government. The couple recently invited Barrett-Mills to stay with them on a reservation in the American Southwest.

"I focused this film on the economic development of the reservation," Barrett-Mills said, "how the Native Americans there were able to maintain their culture during the implementation of resorts and casinos."

In an effort to make this film bigger and better than his first, Barrett-Mills has taken up grantwriting. He said he has already sent out 50 to 60 requests and is working on a second batch.

"I am also putting together a promotional trailer to send out to people interested in funding because not a lot of people are going to give a 19-year-old kid a check unless he can prove what he is doing is legitimate."

So why did Barrett-Mills come to Case instead of a film school on the East or West Coast? He said he actually is as interested in child psychology as he is in film. His younger brother was adopted, and his family made it through some rough times with the help of a child psychologist.

"What I'm doing is majoring in psychology and English to help fuel my feature films in the future," Barrett-Mills said. "If that doesn't work out, maybe I can use my talents in the field of psychology, making instructional films or something like that."

Upon his scheduled graduation in the spring of 2006, Barrett-Mills said he may pursue a master's degree in documentary at the University of California, Berkley, or Columbia University.

For now, making movies seems to working out just fine. Due to contacts Barrett-Mills made during a summer workshop at Rockport College in Maine where he worked lighting and as a camera operator on a film shoot, he already has a slew of film jobs lined up across the country—so many that he is likely to take a hiatus from the football squad to catch up on his budding career in film.

Return to the online edition of the 10-2-03 Campus News.