Emmy-winning filmmaker Max Shores is a forty-year veteran of TV and documentary film production. His work has been featured on Alabama Public Television, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, and PBS stations nationwide.
Shores is a Winfield, Alabama native and a graduate of the University of Alabama. He is a product of the University’s College of Communication and Information Sciences and has been training students in media production both in the field and as adjunct faculty in the Journalism & Creative Media Department since receiving a Masters degree in 1984.
Through his research for The Amazing Story of Kudzu, Shores is considered one of the world’s leading scholars on the kudzu vine. He traced the 1540 route of Spanish conquistador Hernando Desoto across the southeastern U.S. for In Search of Desoto’s Trail and documented the history of what was once called the “wickedest city in America” in Up from the Ashes: the Phenix City Story. In The Chief: Calvin McGhee and the Forgotten Creeks he told the sad, yet triumphant story of a Native American group left behind in Alabama when others were forcibly removed to Oklahoma in the 1830s.
His work has been featured at film festivals and special screenings around the world and has received several festival awards. His documentaries are featured in the online Encyclopedia of Alabama and have been exhibited in the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, California and the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
He is currently teaching media production labs in the University of Alabama Department of Journalism and Creative Media.