Tuesday, February 23, 2021, 7:00 p.m.

Join us for a free online screening of MLK/FBI followed by a live discussion on Tuesday, February 23, at 7:00 p.m. ET with director Sam Pollard and Jamila Wignot (director, Ailey).

MLK/FBI
Dir. Sam Pollard. United States, 2020, 102 mins. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered today as an American hero: a bridge-builder, a shrewd political tactician, and a moral leader. Yet throughout his history-altering political career, he was often treated by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies like an enemy of the state. In this virtuosic documentary, award-winning editor and director Sam Pollard (Editor, 4 Little Girls, Mo’ Better Blues; Director/Producer, Eyez on the Prize, Sammy Davis, Jr: I’ve Gotta Be Me) lays out a detailed account of the FBI surveillance that dogged King’s activism throughout the 1950s and ’60s, fueled by the racist and red-baiting paranoia of J. Edgar Hoover. In crafting a rich archival tapestry, featuring some revelatory restored footage of King, Pollard urges us to remember that true American progress is always hard-won. View trailer.

Special thanks to IFC Films for their support of this program.

About the moderator: Jamila Wignot's directing work includes the series The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, which won the Peabody Award, the Emmy Award, and the NAACP Image Award; Town Hall, a documentary portrait of Tea Party activists; Peabody Award–winning Triangle Fire; and Emmy-nominated Walt Whitman. Wignot’s producing credits include W. Kamau Bell’s Bring the Pain; Musa Syeed's A Stray; and WNET’s The Supreme Court: the Rehnquist Revolution, an IDA Best Limited Series winner. Her newest film, Ailey, a documentary about the legendary dance pioneer Alvin Ailey, debuted at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Watch the recorded conversation here.

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