Touch of Elon makes its way to the silver screen

I enjoyed reading Jay Ashley's recent column about Ted Knight, the TV star who once worked at local radio station WFNS.

Jay recalled the time Knight wore an Elon College sweatshirt on his program, bringing some added national attention to the school about the time it was winning a couple of national championships in football.

Now the school - Elon University now - is getting some international attention in a most subtle way in a movie which won an award at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

This time, the individual responsible for the attention is a young Elon grad who not so long ago was flitting about the campus at Elon University, shooting scenes for various projects in his work in the School of Communications.

Laith Al-Mayali was unique in that he was the only student from Jordan on campus. He came to Elon on the King Hussein Scholarship established by Hussein's widow, Queen Noor, when she visited Elon several years ago. Laith was the first to use that scholarship.

Every time I saw him in his four years at Elon, he always stopped and talked. He was always at work on something. He spent a lot of hours in the Communications building, working on his tapes, editing, shooting more, editing more.

Then two years ago he graduated.

Recently, Laith was part of a team that was honored at the famed Sundance Film Festival with its 2008 World Cinema Audience Award for a special movie they produced.

The movie, "Captain Aburaed," is the first Jordanian feature film exported for theaters around the world. Laith was a producer and did the editing on the film.

I saw Laith a few months after he graduated, and he told me he was working on a project in California, but I had no idea he was into something that would bring him such attention.

He went there and met Amin Matalga, a Jordanian writer and director. Laith worked with him on several shorts. But it was not long before Laith, through some family connections in Jordan, met producer David Pritchett. You may not know the name, but you will know some of his work - "King of the Hill," "Family Guy," "The Simpsons."

Pritchett met with Amin and Laith, and they told him of their desire to produce a Jordanian film. Pritchett challenged them to write an Arab language film that could be produced in Jordan. They formed Pen and Paper Films in Jordan and went to work on their film.

"Captain Aburaed" is the story of a lonely Jordanian man who is a janitor in the international airport there. One day, he finds an airline captain's hat and wears it home. Kids who see him think he is a real captain, and they begin to follow him every day. He loves the attention and tells the kids stories of far-away places and of great adventures he has had as a pilot.

There is one guy who tries to show Aburaed as a liar, but he eventually has a change of heart, and there is also a female pilot who turns to Aburaed for help in getting her life on track again.

Ray Johnson and Jay McMurty of the School of Communications were at the festival to see the film, and Ray says that about halfway through the picture, there is a young man wearing a baseball cap. And its logo, he said, is quite familiar - an Elon logo. And a shot from behind shows the words Elon University written on the strap across the back of the cap. Laith left his mark.

Don Bolden is editor emeritus of the Times-News. His column appears every Sunday. He can be contacted at DBolden202@aol.com