sam pollard – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER – Review by Leslie Combemale

November 25, 2022November 27, 2022 Leslie Combemale Black power, Ella Baker, Geeta Gandbhir, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, Mississippi Freedom Summer, sam pollard, SNCC, Stokely Carmichael, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, The Voting Rights Act of 1965

Despite the passage of The Voting Rights Act in 1965, there were parts of the US where Black persons registering to vote were risking their lives. Nowhere better exemplified that sad truth than Lowndes, an impoverished county outside Montgomery, Alabama, a place where 80% of the population was Black but not one registered voter was Black. Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power reminds us that history is repeating itself. It’s a documentary that certain boards of education would fight tooth and nail to keep from being played in schools, but is one that should be required viewing at every high school across the country.

Reviews

MLK/FBI – Review by Martha K Baker

January 21, 2021January 21, 2021 Martha K. Baker documentaries, j edgar hoover, Martin Luther King, MLK/FBI, sam pollard, TIFF, toronto international film festival

Sam Pollard’s excellent documentary, MLK/FBI,”principally covers the last five years of Martin Luther King’s life. None of its major points is really new: he worked under tremendous pressure, he was hounded by the FBI, he was profligate. What this film does reveal is how those details defined him.

Reviews

MLK/FBI – Review by Pam Grady

January 16, 2021January 21, 2021 Pam Grady documentaries, j edgar hoover, Martin Luther King, MLK/FBI, sam pollard, TIFF, toronto international film festival

Filmmaker Sam Pollard doesn’t just bring history to life, but Dr. Martin Luther King himself. There he is: living, breathing, changing hearts, minds, and society. MLK/FBI serves as a timely reminder. Set in a past that is rapidly receding, it speaks directly to the era we are living through now with a politicized FBI and Justice Dept. Hoover was a villain who misused his office to persecute a man whose only crime was leading the fight for equal rights. Hoover’s heirs are still at it, with more sophisticated surveillance equipment and more targets, people who wear bullseyes on their backs simply for advocating for justice and change. It is institutional behavior that was and is the nation’s shame.

Festivals Reviews

MLK/FBI (TIFF20) – Review by Pam Grady

September 24, 2020September 25, 2020 Pam Grady 0 Comments documentaries, j edgar hoover, MLK/FBI, sam pollard, TIFF, toronto international film festival

Filmmaker Sam Pollard eschews talking head interviews in favor of filling the frame with archival material. The Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington, the march from Selma to Montgomery, the signing of the Civil Rights Act into law, and other moments, earth-shaking and intimate, are the images that unfurl on screen. The effect is arresting. Pollard doesn’t just bring history to life, but King himself. There he is: living, breathing, changing hearts, minds, and society.