Coming to PBS today, Tuesday, August 27: THE MARCH
John Akomfrah’s detailed exploration of the historic 1963 March on Washington makes its debut tonight on PBS as part of a special week of programming commemorating the watershed moment in civil rights. It will be rebroadcast tomorrow, on the actual 50th anniversary, with viewers afforded the opportunity to interact with original organizers and key activists.
On August 28, 1963, 250,000 Americans, both black and white, descended upon the nation’s capital to peacefully demand an end to segregation and other discriminatory practices, creating a lasting symbol that motivated lawmakers to pass important reforms. John Akomfrah’s film transports the viewer back to that time, profiling the major players behind the scenes who made that historic assemblage possible, from organizers A Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and the coalition of civil rights leaders who brokered the support of Kennedy’s White House, to committed volunteers who worked tirelessly to spread awareness of the event and to organize the logistics to enable supporters to attend from all over the country. While moments from the event, which caps off the riveting film, like Martin Luther King Jr’s masterful “I Have A Dream” speech – the final one delivered – still carry tremendous emotional resonance, the film also spotlights other, less widely remembered invocations, such as John Lewis’, which threatened a last-minute schism because of its potentially incendiary language, prompting a rewrite. As he has demonstrated in his past work, Akomfrah skillfully builds the film largely through archival footage, much of it rarely seen, creating an immersive effect that places the viewer into the racially divided United States of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and captures the immediacy of a society during a transformational moment.
what (not) to doc 