Fall 2021 Showcase Fitts

Bethany Fitts

Team Ra

Team Ra is an observational martial arts documentary that focuses on storytelling and movement rather than the sport itself. The film’s narrator Sung Ra (Master Ra) moved from South Korea to the United States as a middle school student, and he struggled to fit in with the other kids in Oxford, Mississippi. Now he is the owner and Master of a successful seventeen year-old taekwondo studio in the same small town. With this business he attempts to teach his students more than kicking and punching; He tries to teach them how to live a life. The film intermingles Master Ra’s compelling stories with footage of his taekwondo studio and interactions with students. The movement captured is beautiful and precise rather than violent.

Bethany Fitts is a Southern Studies MA student and Graduate Writing Fellow at the University of Mississippi. Before earning her MA, she was a Fulbright ETA in the Czech Republic where she led creative writing workshops and literature seminars with gymnasium students. She is now the team manager and photographer for Elite Martial Arts, a taekwondo studio in Oxford, MS.