Though Brooke Hanvey and Elizabeth Kee will graduated from their nine-month long leadership training March 1 their leadership project will live on.

Leading Edge Institute is a program for college women in Alabama, Hanvey said. The state of Alabama has a lack of leading women and Leading Edge wishes to train college women who will stay and use their skills to better the state, she said.

“They train us over nine months to do all sorts of things — even meet with a senator,” Hanvey said. “The biggest part of that (program) is our leadership action project.”

Hanvey and Kee decided to create Citing Cinema as their leadership action project.

“We wanted it to be sustainable so we decided we would make a film series,” Kee said. “Our film series would have to address a political or moral issue (with) every installment. We decided to have a discussion with every installment, so we’re not just showing a film.”

The first film Hanvey and Kee presented was ‘The Invisible War,’ a film about the rape epidemic in the military, said Emily Kelley, an adviser for Leading Edge Institute at UNA.

“We had 100 people show up,” Kee said. “Whenever we opened it up to the audience it was just like rapid fire. We ended up having to cut people off because of a time limit, but we were really excited that we had people participating in the discussion.”

Citing Cinema is focused on enlightening people on serious issues, Kee said.

“What interested me most was that it (the project) was sustaining and it would satisfy a need on this campus and in the local community.” Kelley said.

Kelley was please with the effect the film had on the students, she said.

“It really opened the eyes of particular students who came to ‘The Invisible War,’” Kelley said. “It had a powerful effect on everyone who watched it and awakened a lot of people to this pervasive evil.”

Hanvey and Kee are graduating from the program this month, but they plan on continuing to show films that spread awareness.

“Right now we’re looking at showing another film,” Kee said. “A movie has approached us called ‘Chasing Ice,’ (and) we are planning on showing it either later this semester or the beginning of next semester.”

Though the first Citing Cinema event has passed and the next date is not set, they encourages students to go to more events organized by students around campus, Hanvey said.