Most documentaries will usually interview 20-25 people and then whittle it down to about 10-15 that are used in the final cut, but Sam Pollard went in a different direction with his latest, “MLK/FBI.” “. This we had the reverse philosophy. We said we don’t want a lot of people to talk about this story. We’re going to find a core group of people,” he said in our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video above). In addition to David Garrow, the author of the book the film is based on, Pollard wanted two of King’s closest confidants, two people specializing in the history of the FBI and two people who understood the inner workings of the bureau. It was the film’s screenwriter, Ben Hedin, who made the suggestion of James Comey, the former FBI director. “My first reaction was that Comey would probably say no. But,...
- 1/25/2021
- by Charles Bright
- Gold Derby
Packed to the brim with historical documents and recently declassified materials, Sam Pollard, documentarian and editor of Spike Lee's films, among many others, brings us MLK/FBI, a searing indictment of government surveillance and a smear campaign on one of the most revered figures in American history. The film is drawn from David Garrow's book, The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.: From Solo to Memphis, in which the author and King biographer accuses King of participating in a rape in a hotel room in 1964, based on a declassified, handwritten memo from FBI documents that are now on the National Archive website. With Trump's 'Law and Order' rhetoric rising amid nationwide protests against police violence...
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- 1/15/2021
- Screen Anarchy
Sam Pollard’s “MLK/FBI” follows the dirty war that America’s FBI declared on civil rights figurehead Martin Luther King, a vendetta that began in the 50s and ended with his assassination in 1968, inspired by recent revelations (as well as credible long-held suspicions), and backed up by declassified secret government documents. Documentary festival IDFA, which runs until Dec. 6, selected the title in their Masters section.
Welcoming Pollard, an Oscar nominee and three-time Emmy winner, to the festival, IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabia wondered why the African-American director had taken so long to get round to this subject, given his well-known passion for documenting the injustices of the civil rights era. The director welcomed the question, noting that sometimes a story can “be right in front of you, but you’re not quite sure when it should be put into production, when it should be told.”
“I had spent a lot of time,...
Welcoming Pollard, an Oscar nominee and three-time Emmy winner, to the festival, IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabia wondered why the African-American director had taken so long to get round to this subject, given his well-known passion for documenting the injustices of the civil rights era. The director welcomed the question, noting that sometimes a story can “be right in front of you, but you’re not quite sure when it should be put into production, when it should be told.”
“I had spent a lot of time,...
- 11/29/2020
- by Damon Wise
- Variety Film + TV
In order to make sense of newly declassified documents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s, filmmaker Sam Pollard brought together some of the country’s most knowledgeable minds in American literature and politics to tell the story. Pulitzer Prize winning author David Garrow, civil rights activist Andrew Young and former director of the FBI James Comey are among the names that help unpack the files and narrate Pollard’s enlightening new documentary “MLK/FBI.”
And yet somehow what the documents reveal isn’t the most meaningful takeaway from the film. More importantly, Pollard uses the FBI’s secretive, intrusive and harassing surveillance of King to examine how humanity is something complex and that people and America’s institutions do not operate as either all good or all bad, but can be understood as being both at once. Pollard helps illuminate this...
And yet somehow what the documents reveal isn’t the most meaningful takeaway from the film. More importantly, Pollard uses the FBI’s secretive, intrusive and harassing surveillance of King to examine how humanity is something complex and that people and America’s institutions do not operate as either all good or all bad, but can be understood as being both at once. Pollard helps illuminate this...
- 10/28/2020
- by John Benutty
- Gold Derby
“MLK/FBI” reveals shocking behavior by the American government, but the most troubling aspect of its revelations is that nobody had to answer for it. Sam Pollard’s sobering and essential documentary recounts the government’s efforts to blackmail, discredit, and otherwise disempower Martin Luther King, Jr. during the height of the Civil Rights movement, by recording his marital infidelities and wielding them like a blunt weapon. However, the most revealing takeaway from this searing overview isn’t that J. Edgar Hoover used every dirty machination at his disposal to take King down, but that most of the country seemed to think it was the right thing to do.
Among the many voices heard, several express awe at the impact of Hoover’s 48-year FBI reign, which allowed him to shape national identity with a racist framework that permeated society at the time, and continues to resonate now. Though Pollard draws...
Among the many voices heard, several express awe at the impact of Hoover’s 48-year FBI reign, which allowed him to shape national identity with a racist framework that permeated society at the time, and continues to resonate now. Though Pollard draws...
- 9/13/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Former President Barack Obama proposed to another woman before he met wife Michelle Obama, according to an upcoming biography on his life before his presidency.
In the new book, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, Obama’s ex-girlfriend Sheila Miyoshi Jager tells author David Garrow, “In the winter of ‘86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him.”
The former couple had dated and lived together for years before Obama proposed in 1986 when he was 25. Jager was 23 at the time and her parents thought she was too young to get married. So she told him, “Not yet,...
In the new book, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, Obama’s ex-girlfriend Sheila Miyoshi Jager tells author David Garrow, “In the winter of ‘86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him.”
The former couple had dated and lived together for years before Obama proposed in 1986 when he was 25. Jager was 23 at the time and her parents thought she was too young to get married. So she told him, “Not yet,...
- 5/3/2017
- by Sam Gillette
- PEOPLE.com
Barack Obama proposed to a woman who rejected him not once but twice ... before he met Michelle -- this according to a new biography. The woman is Sheila Miyoshi Jager. David Garrow, author of the new book, "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama," says Obama met Jager in the mid-'80s when he was doing community organizing in Chicago. Jager, of Dutch and Japanese ancestry, told Garrow even back then, Obama had a strong...
- 5/3/2017
- by TMZ Staff
- TMZ
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