In its opening weekend, showing on only 12 screens in 10 markets, the independent documentary Call + Response had one of the top five biggest openings for a political documentary in 2008. In many of the markets in which it opened, it beat out major studio and star projects including the Leonardo DiCaprio-Russell Crowe collaboration Body of Lies and the Keira Knightly period piece The Duchess. Even more impressive is that the Call + Response does not have a distributor, is not backed by any major studio, and opened without any traditional advertising whatsoever.

The film, a sort of half-documentary, half-benefit-concert, is unique simply because of its form. Its cause is the abolition of modern day slavery and human trafficking. Its origin, musician Justin Dillon's discovery of how real and widespread human slavery is and his felt need to do something about it. While the film does contain information about modern human trafficking, the most noticeable difference between Call + Response and most documentaries is that it is almost more feeling than fact. Instead of presenting human slavery as a body of statistics, it gives us the cry of its slaves. And in turn, instead of just making you think, it pushes you to care.

As one of Dillon's subjects says of the typical human response to such global tragedies as human slavery, "We resonate between obliviousness and the paralysis of despair." In such as state, says Dr. Cornell West, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, the question you then must ask is: "How do you convince a folk who are prone to paralysis to keep on moving?" And in Dillon's film, it is as if he has captured the perfect answer to that question.

When I think of my own responses to tragedy, I know that it is a rare TV special, lecture, or phone call that will get me to do anything. It's not that I want people to die of cancer or children to starve in Africa, it's that somehow the facts just don't get deep enough to make me move. Yes, it is a problem, but what can I do? If I had a million dollars, I'd donate it. But since I don't? So big, strange, and foreign, much of the world's tragedies aren't anything my own experience gives me even the slightest idea how to confront. And since it isn't something affecting my mother, my father, my sister, or my best friend, unfortunately I am not moved to actually figure out how I can.

Cue the strength of Call + Response. It is informative. It reveals to us the basics of how human trafficking operates and how widespread a capital enterprise it truly is. It shares the stories of actual sex slaves, labor slaves, and child soldiers. But more than just a collection of facts and a string of narratives, Call + Response is a body of emotion. It is what its title says, the cry of the people it is about and a response of those who have heard that cry. And for much of the movie, those cries and responses are heard through music.

As Dillon says of his initial idea for the film, he wanted to know if anyone had any response to human slavery in music. Through the music of 12 different musicians/musical groups—from rappers to rockers filmed on stages all the way from Los Angeles to London and everywhere in between—that response is given to us. And I have to say, the medium is powerful.

In segments interspersed throughout the film, Dr. Cornell West serves primarily to paint a picture of the intrinsic connections that exist between slavery and music. "The only possession slaves had were their voices in their head," says West of slaves living in pre-abolitionist America. From those voices rose the cry of oppression and the call for freedom that became the Nego Spiritual and a basis for much of contemporary music. West describes music as a "truth teller."

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