Directed by Brad Lichtenstein • Documentary • With Susan Sarandon • 2001 • 90 minutes
Attica. Like Watergate and Vietnam, it is an icon of recent history. Gov. Rockefeller's brutal re-taking of the prison - a nine-minute, 1600-bullet assault that took the lives of 29 inmates and 10 guards - put an end to the four-day rebellion. But the struggle for justice, by both prisoners and guards, has endured for three decades. Only last year, inmates wrested an historic $12-million settlement from the state, and that bittersweet victory spurred a new round of agitation by guards and their survivors. This stirring documentary features extensive interviews with Attica survivors, including former inmate Frank 'Black' Smith. When the riot broke out, the inmates, who respected his level head, imposing size, and maturity, appointed him Chief of Security. After the prison was stormed, Black was singled out for vicious treatment by the guards, who tortured him for hours with cigarettes, Russian roulette, and threatened castration and death. In the years since his release, Black overcame a drug habit, married, and became a drug counselor for juveniles. Also interviewed is Mike Smith, who, then 22 years old and married with a child, was a guard who was taken hostage and subsequently wounded by police fire. But more recently, he took on a new role: that of political agitator. He went on to lobby Governor Pataki for compensation, counseling, and an apology from the State. Elizabeth Fink, the attorney who headed the inmates' decades-long legal battles against New York State, is also interviewed. Fink has devoted her entire career to the surviving inmates. Other interviews include those with New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, Congressman Herman Badillo, Assemblyman Arthur Eve, and civil rights lawyer William Kunstler. GHOSTS OF ATTICA offers the definitive account of America's...
Directed by Jens Meurer • Documentary • 1999 • 50 minutes
PUBLIC ENEMY presents four charismatic and influential Americans who have been leading wildly dissimilar lives, yet they have one thing in common: they are all former members of the Black Panther Party - the radical black liberation movem...
Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1967 • 16 minutes
Made for the William Greaves-produced WNET program Black Journal, A TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X includes an interview with Malcolm X’s widow Dr. Betty Shabazz, shortly after his 1965 assassination.
Courtesy of THIRTEEN PRODUCTIONS, LLC an...
Directed by Gordon Quinn • Documentary • 2017 • 30 minutes
On October 22, 1963, more than 250,000 students boycotted the Chicago Public Schools to protest racial segregation. Many marched through the city calling for the resignation of School Superintendent Benjamin Willis, who placed trailers, ...