"Prom Night in Mississippi," a thought-provoking and engaging documentary, chronicles the contentious but ultimately inspiring launching of the first racially integrated high school senior prom in small-town Charleston, Miss.

The date of that historic prom: April 19, 2008.

Producer-director Paul Saltzman found a kindred spirit in actor Morgan Freeman, who had offered to pay for the prom.

Photos courtesy Emerging Pictures

"There were moments of fear in the '60s, and there were moments of fear this time, too," said Paul Saltzman. But his film's message is one of hope.

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It seems shocking that such a "first" occurred less than a year ago. But like many of the best documentaries, "Prom Night" demonstrates that the real world can be as full of shocks and twists and comedy and terror and heroes and villains and even Morgan Freeman as the most outrageous Hollywood productions.

"Prom Night in Mississippi" is the opening-night selection for the 10th annual On Location: Memphis International Film Fest.

The movie -- which made its debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and has picked up several awards at other festivals since -- screens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Malco Ridgeway Four, 5853 Ridgeway Center Pkwy. Tickets are $10, and are on sale at malco.com.

The screening is presented in partnership with Facing History and Ourselves, an educational program that helps students learn to confront intolerance.

Director/producer Paul Saltzman and producer Patricia Aquino (Saltzman's wife) will introduce the film, and answer questions after the screening. Several of the young people featured in the documentary also are expected to attend.

The film will be followed by a party and festival awards ceremony at Downtown's Ground Zero Blues Club, just west of FedExForum at 158 Lt. George W. Lee Ave. Admission is $10.

The festival continues through Sunday, April 26. For its final three days, it will occupy all four screens at the Ridgeway, with a lineup of close to 75 narrative and documentary features and shorts, as well as panels and workshops. (A complete schedule can be found at www.onlocationmemphis. org.)

In a recent telephone interview from his home near Toronto, Saltzman said the roots of his documentary reach back to the heyday of the civil rights fight, when he left his home in Canada in 1965 to work on voter registration drives in the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Saltzman spent three months in the Delta and the Jackson area before returning home to pursue a successful career as a photographer (while studying with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India in 1968, he shot pictures of the Beatles), television producer and filmmaker for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, HBO, The Disney Channel and other companies.

Still, Mississippi was on his mind. "I always wondered what had changed and what had not changed since I had been there," said Saltzman, 65.

In 2006, he and Aquino made plans to produce a documentary memoir (which they still intend to finish) called "Return to Mississippi." But when they learned about the traditional segregated proms of Charleston -- one for black students, one for white students, both privately organized and financed outside the school system, which sponsored no prom of its own -- they knew they'd found a fascinating subject for a film.

Their interest increased after they learned that Memphis-born Charleston resident Morgan Freeman had offered to pay for a school-sanctioned integrated prom 10 years earlier -- an offer that had been rejected.

Saltzman called Freeman, who said his offer was still good. With Saltzman's crew documenting the event, the Academy Award-winning actor returned to the Tallahatchie County school district, which this time accepted the offer.

Saltzman and Aquino moved to a rented house near Charleston and became part of the community. With the cooperation of generous but wary school officials and the assistance of Mississippi associate producer Thabi Moyo, they shot at Charleston High School and other locations almost every day for four months. In particular, they focused on 13 gregarious students, including the white daughter of a diehard racist, the black president of the school's National Honor Society, and an integrated couple. Ultimately, they crafted a 91-minute film from 165 hours of footage -- a movie that's surprisingly suspenseful, even for viewers who know the outcome of the prom plan.

Some Charleston parents not only refused to appear on camera but refused to allow their children to attend the mixed prom. They hosted their own whites-only dance prior to the school event.

"Those people who are very anti-black didn't like the idea we were filming," said Saltzman (who said there's plenty of racial prejudice in Canada as well as Mississippi). "Certainly, there were moments of fear in the '60s, and there were moments of fear this time, too."

But the movie's message is one of hope.

Said Saltzman: "The real reason to do the film was to get it in front of young people, so they could be encouraged to look within themselves, at their attitudes and beliefs and prejudices."

"I love the movie," said Chasidy Buckley, 18, one of the "stars" of "Prom Night," now in her first year at Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss. "When they were filming, we just thought it was going to be like something homemade, but it was a whole lot better."

Buckley attended the movie's premiere at Sundance in Park City, Utah, and may come to Memphis. "The feeling that I felt that night -- I'd never had a feeling like that in my life. I was just overwhelmed -- seeing myself on the big screen was awesome."

If nothing else, the film and Freeman may have spawned a tradition: Charleston High School hosts its second integrated prom this weekend.

-- John Beifuss: 529-2394