BAMcinématek presents “A Time for Burning: Cinema of the Civil Rights Movement,” 40 films from Aug 13—28
From Tuesday, Aug. 13 through Wednesday, Aug. 28, BAMcinématek presents A Time for Burning: Cinema of the Civil Rights Movement, a 40-film series commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The series covers the civil rights movement from the end of World War II to the historic 1963 march and the waves of legislation that passed in the years after. Culled from 28 private film and television archives, collectors, studios and the New York Public Library, these films create a picture of what is often called the heroic era of the movement, with rarely screened documentaries and archival footage alongside Hollywood classics, revolutionary independent films, agitprop and incendiary exploitation movies.
Opening the series on the 13th is the New York premiere of a new 35mm restoration of King: A Filmed Record…Montgomery to Memphis (1970), a chronicle of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., from the early days of his civil rights activism to his eventual assassination. Originally released in theaters as a one-night-only event, this documentary, which was produced and compiled by Ely Landau, was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress, thus being inducted into the National Film Registry. Featuring narration by luminaries including Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Ben Gazzara, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Anthony Quinn and Joanne Woodward, King “is fierce, violent, tender, hopeful and…above all, it is a compelling reminder that much remains to be done” (The Washington Post).
While King is a microcosm of the series itself, by blending documentary newsreel footage of King with interpretations by Hollywood figures of the day, it is no coincidence that A Time for Burning: Cinema of the Civil Rights Movement traces the history of mid-century documentary filmmaking, from Leo Hurwitz’s attempt to extend the agitprop of the Great Depression and World War II into the postwar era (and his subsequent blacklisting), to George Stoney, James Blue, and Charles Guggenheim’s progressive work within the United States Information Agency, to Direct Cinema. The earliest film in the series, Hurwitz and Paul Strand’s docudrama Native Land (1942—Aug. 14) is a harrowing commentary on American labor struggles and the fascism within our own borders. Called “one of the most powerful and disturbing documentary films ever made” (Bosley Crowther, The New York Times), it is emblematic of a style of filmmaking that emerged during that turbulent era—one that recurs throughout the series.