Eastern Kentucky filmmaker Elizabeth Barret hosted a screening of her documentary “Stranger With a Camera” on Wednesday at Western Kentucky University’s Cherry Hall.

The film tells the story of Canadian filmmaker Hugh O’Connor, who was murdered in 1967 by Hobart Ison as O’Connor filmed people living in one of Ison’s rental houses for a documentary. The film serves to examine the relationship between media members who document the lives of the poor in Appalachia and the subjects being documented.

Barret was born and raised near the Letcher County community of Jeremiah, where the shooting took place, and was a high school student at the time of the murder.

She made the film for Appalshop, an arts and education center in Whitesburg.

Ison’s trial, which was moved to Harlan County in 1969, resulted in a hung jury. Before a second trial could take place, he accepted a plea agreement and served one year of a 10-year sentence before being paroled. He died in 1978.

The shooting took place amid the backdrop of the war on poverty, during which several filmmakers, reporters, volunteers and, at one point, President Lyndon Johnson, visited eastern Kentucky to observe and document the conditions there.

Many natives regarded these visitors, particularly media members, warily.

“As someone who lives here, I have an instinct to protect my community from those who would harm it,” Barret says in the film. “What are the responsibilities of any of us who take the images of other people and put them to our own uses?”

About 75 students and members of the public attended the screening and stayed afterward for a question and answer session with Barret.

Jake Stevens, a WKU junior studying photojournalism, said the film enabled him to evaluate his own approach to documenting subjects.

“It gave me a better understanding of the history behind what was going on there,” said Stevens, 23, of Scranton, Pa. “It made me think about what effect my work has on a community and how (my subjects) perceive it is more important than how I perceive it.”