The art of being ‘Shunned’

Amish farmer Paul Edwards

Callie T. Wiser is a Baylor School graduate who wrote, produced and directed the American Experience documentary “Amish Shunned.”

Callie T. Wiser likes the gray areas of a story. Always interested in history, she prefers to dig beyond just learning the dates and names related to historical events.

Even while being part of a film discussion group as a student at Baylor School, where she graduated in 1998, she was more interested in the back story to some of the classic films the group dissected.

“I like complicating and making people be human beings rather than characters in a history book,” she says.

It is largely that part of her that led the Signal Mountain native to become a filmmaker and documentarian, including her latest, the documentary “Amish Shunned,” which is airing on PBS stations nationwide. She currently lives and works in Massachusetts, where she has worked with the PBS series “Frontline” and for American Experience films.