Film:  Kansas vs. Darwin (documentary) http://www.kansasvdarwin.com/

Studio:    Unconditional Films

Director: Jeff Tamblyn

Screening Date:  September 17, 2007 Kansas International Film Festival (World Premiere)

Film length:  82 minutes

Rating:  unrated 

4 Stars 

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner 

From May 5 to May 12, 2005, the State Board Science Hearing Committee of the Kansas State School Board held hearings on proposed standards for teaching the origin of life in Kansas public schools.  The hearings became the subject of worldwide attention, often compared to the Scopes Trial of 1925 that became the subject of the play and later film, Inherit the Wind.   

Director Jeff Tamblyn recognized these hearings as a documentary waiting to be made.  The result is Darwin vs. Kansas which had its world premiere at the Kansas International Film Festival, with many of the on-film participants in the audience. 

Led by a conservative Christian majority, the Kansas Board of Education proposed standards that would add to the public school mission statement that science education should seek “to inform”; define science so as not to preclude supernatural explanations; permit intelligent design to be taught as another theory without endorsing it; state that evolution is a theory and not a fact; and require informing students of controversies surrounding evolution.  Before the vote on these standards, a State Board Science Hearing Committee scheduled hearings to receive testimony on intelligent design and evolution.  Members of the science community, led by Kansas Citizens for Science, urged scientists who would have testified in favor of evolution studies to boycott the hearings.  They believed such testimony would only “add credibility” to the actions of the Board of Education.  The result was a hearing dominated by representatives of the intelligent design movement.  However, attorney Pedro Irigonegaray came forward to testify on the evolution side and provide cross-examination of Intelligent Design witnesses.  

The Kansas State School Board adopted the standards in November 2005.  After an election in which the conservative members were turned out of office, the new standards were repealed in February 2007    

Tamblyn's film gives ample time to both sides of the controversial hearings, through testimony and questioning at the hearings themselves and independent interviews.  His personal leanings may be evident, but he makes his case simply by giving representatives of the other side enough film to hang themselves. 

An audience member who had seen an earlier version of the film expressed disappointment that many of the scientific arguments had been deleted from this final version. Tamblyn explained he decided to focus more on the political procedures and events rather than the science arguments themselves, to make a more accessible film, and jokingly added, “so the nerds lose.”  It was a good decision.  A good documentary will present a controversial issue in such a way that the viewers will become curious and perform their own research to learn more. Tamblyn has done that with this film. 

Kansas vs. Darwin will have its next screening at the Secret City Film Festival, Oak Ridge, Tennessee (October 4-7).