The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306 | |
---|---|
Directed by | Adam Pertofsky |
Produced by | Margaret Hyde |
Production company | Rock Paper Scissors |
Distributed by | National Civil Rights Museum HBO |
Running time | 32 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306 is a 2008 documentary short film created to honor the 40th annual remembrance of the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. Directed by Adam Pertofsky, the film received a 2008 Oscar nomination in the "Best Documentary Short Subject" Category at the 81st Academy Awards.
Directed by filmmaker Adam Pertofsky and produced by Margaret Hyde, the 32-minute film describes the weeks and days leading up to King's return in 1968 to assist sanitation workers striking in Memphis, Tennessee. On April 4, as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel outside of Room 306 greeting visitors below, King was assassinated by a gunman. With an intimate portrayal provided by Samuel "Billy" Kyles who himself was on the balcony only a few feet away when the fatal shot was fired, the film is an introduction to the legacy of King as revealed in conversations and personal aspirations shared with Kyles and others who played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement during that pivotal era of U.S. history. [1]
Although numerous films have been made on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, Witness looks at King's work from the perspective of a friend and one of the last surviving eyewitnesses (Rev. Kyles). The film contributes original personal interviews along with a local perspective. Shot on-location in Memphis at several historic sites, it highlights King's efforts to improve physical safety and financial conditions of the sanitation workers in the city where he ultimately met his untimely death. [2]
In addition to Kyles, others interviewed for the film include Benjamin Hooks, Civil Rights Leader and former Executive Director of the NAACP, Maxine Smith, previous Executive Secretary for the NAACP Memphis Branch, and Taylor Rodgers, one of the original sanitation workers who participated in the strike for better working conditions and had marched alongside King and Kyles. [3]
"The Witness" is a regular feature [2] at the National Civil Rights Museum that is situated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where a wreath marks the location of the balcony outside of Room 306 where King was standing when he was shot and period automobiles adorn the parking lot below. [4]
Filming began in February 2008, with an April 1, 2008 deadline for completion in time for the 40th memorial of King's death. It was done on location at the Lorraine Motel and at several other historic sites in Memphis including the National Civil Rights Museum and Mason Temple Church of God in Christ. About the project, director Adam Pertosfsky said, "I've always had a passion for Dr. King's teachings and the Civil Rights Movement, so when Margaret Hyde, the producer, approached me about doing this film, I was ecstatic. I felt it was a very important piece of history that needed to be documented." [5]
Regarding the effort that took the film from inception to screening in seven months, Executive Producer Margaret Hyde said, "Everyone, especially Rev. Kyles, participated with the proviso that we didn't seek to personally benefit from the film and that all proceeds would go to the Museum. We knew we just couldn't think of making the film any other way. Everyone interviewed in the film donated his or her time and we were able to screen the film at the NCRM in time for the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination commemoration." [6]
Kyles, reflecting on why he was present on that balcony that day and how it became clear only much later: "He was there to help keep alive King's legacy and his dream of equal rights for African-Americans. 'Crucifixions have to have witnesses,' says Kyles. 'You can kill the dreamer but you cannot...kill the dream.'" [7]
The film received positive critical acclaim and received an Oscar nomination at the 2009 Academy Awards for "Best Documentary Short Subject". [8] At the 2008 Palm Springs International ShortFest, it won the Audience "Favorite" Award for "Best Documentary" along with the Jury award for Best Documentary. [9] It won in these categories at the Aspen Film Shortsfest 2009, [10] and received "Best Documentary Short" at the 2009 Nashville Film Festival [11] and at the Riverrun International Film Festival 2009. [12] LA Times television critic Robert Lloyd described the film as "powerful". [13]
King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis is a 1970 American documentary film biography of Martin Luther King Jr. and his creation and leadership of the nonviolent campaign for civil rights and social and economic justice in the Civil Rights Movement.
Loyd Jowers was an American restaurateur and the owner of Jim's Grill, a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. For the first 25 years after the assassination of King, Jowers testified that he was in the restaurant at the time of the assassination, a fact supported by the other witnesses in the restaurant.
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was ordained in the Baptist tradition in 1948. As a leader of the civil rights movement, he was a close friend and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. He collaborated with King and E. D. Nixon to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led to the Montgomery bus boycott and co-created and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He became president of the SCLC following the assassination of King in 1968; he led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., as well as other marches and demonstrations for disenfranchised Americans. He also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
The National Civil Rights Museum is a complex of museums and historic buildings in Memphis, Tennessee; its exhibits trace the history of the civil rights movement in the United States from the 17th century to the present. The museum is built around the former Lorraine Motel, which was the site of the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Two other buildings and their adjacent property, also connected with the King assassination, have been acquired as part of the museum complex.
Alberta Christine Williams King was an American civil rights organizer best known as the wife of Martin Luther King Sr., and as the mother of Martin Luther King Jr. She was the choir director of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She was shot and killed in the church by 23-year-old Marcus Wayne Chenault six years after the assassination of her eldest son Martin Luther King Jr.
Mason Temple, located in Memphis, Tennessee, is a Christian international sanctuary and central headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, the largest African American Pentecostal group in the world. The building was named for Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, who is entombed in a marble crypt inside the Temple.
Earl Caldwell is an American journalist. He documented the Black Panthers from the inside in 1969, and became embroiled in a landmark 1972 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court clarifying reporters' rights. The case started when the FBI pressured Caldwell unsuccessfully to be an informant against the Black Panther Party. He worked for The New York Times, the New York Daily News, The New York Amsterdam News and is on the radio in New York City. His career as a journalist spans more than four decades. He witnessed and chronicled some of the most important civil rights events from the 1960s onwards. He was the only reporter present when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Caldwell is a founding member of the steering committee of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, as well as the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In 2009 he was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.
The Memphis sanitation strike began on February 12, 1968, in response to the deaths of sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker. The deaths served as a breaking point for more than 1,300 African American men from the Memphis Department of Public Works as they demanded higher wages, time and a half overtime, dues check-off, safety measures, and pay for the rainy days when they were told to go home.
No Name in the Street is American writer and poet James Baldwin's fourth non-fiction book, first published in 1972. Baldwin describes his views on several historical events and figures: Francisco Franco, McCarthyism, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The book also covers the Algerian War and Albert Camus' take on it.
James Earl Ray was an American fugitive who was convicted of the Murder of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. After the assassination, Ray fled the United States and was captured in the United Kingdom. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty plea—thus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentence—and was sentenced to 99 years of imprisonment.
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights movement leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested on June 8, 1968, at London's Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and to be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful. Ray died in prison in 1998.
The Mountaintop is a play by American playwright Katori Hall. It is a fictional depiction of Martin Luther King Jr.'s last night on earth set entirely in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel on the eve of his assassination in 1968.
D'Army Bailey was an American lawyer, circuit court judge, civil rights activist, author, and film actor. Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, he served as a city councilman in Berkeley, California, from 1971 to 1973.
The Baldwin–Kennedy meeting of May 24, 1963 was an attempt to improve race relations in the United States. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited novelist James Baldwin, along with a large group of cultural leaders, to meet Kennedy in an apartment in New York City. The meeting became antagonistic and the group reached no consensus. The black delegation generally felt that Kennedy did not understand the full extent of racism in the United States. Ultimately the meeting demonstrated the urgency of the racial situation and was a positive turning point in Kennedy's attitude towards the Civil Rights Movement.
The history of the 1954 to 1968 American civil rights movement has been depicted and documented in film, song, theater, television, and the visual arts. These presentations add to and maintain cultural awareness and understanding of the goals, tactics, and accomplishments of the people who organized and participated in this nonviolent movement.
Larry Payne was a sixteen-year old African American teenager who was killed following a march in support of the Memphis sanitation strike on Thursday, March 28, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the only fatality on that day although the New Pittsburgh Courier reported 60 injured and 276 arrested.
Maxine (Atkins) Smith born in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, was an academic, civil rights activist, and school board official.
King in the Wilderness is an American documentary film about Martin Luther King Jr. that premiered on April 2, 2018 on HBO, focusing on the final two years of his life leading up to his assassination on April 4, 1968.
Conspiracy theories about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent leader of the civil rights movement, relate to different accounts of the incident that took place on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, the day after giving his final speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop". Claims soon arose over suspect aspects of King's assassination and the controversial role of the assassin, James Earl Ray. Although his guilty plea eliminated the possibility of a trial before a jury, within days, Ray had recanted and claimed his confession was forced. Suspicions were further raised by the confirmation of illegal surveillance of King by the FBI and the CIA, and the FBI's attempt to allegedly prompt King to commit suicide.
The Loyd Jowers trial, known as King family v. Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators, was an American wrongful death lawsuit brought to trial by the family of Martin Luther King Jr. against Loyd Jowers. The family filed the lawsuit after Jowers admitted on national TV that he had been part of a conspiracy to assassinate the civil rights leader on April 4, 1968. The trial occurred in late 1999. The jury unanimously agreed there was a conspiracy perpetrated by Jowers and other parties, including various government agencies, to murder King and frame James Earl Ray as a patsy.
Kyles arrived at the Lorraine Motel to pick up his friends at 5 p.m. and came to King's room, where he also met up with Rev. Ralph Abernathy.
T.J. Holmes visits the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. It is built around the former Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Acting Credits, Production Credits, Company Information
2009 Academy Award nominated documentary, "The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306"
I've always had a passion for Dr. King's teachings and the Civil Rights Movement, so when Margaret Hyde, the producer, approached me about doing this film, I was ecstatic. I felt it was a very important piece of history that needed to be documented.
Everyone, especially Rev. Kyles, participated with the proviso that we didn't seek to personally benefit from the film and that all proceeds would go to the Museum. We know we just couldn't think of making the film any other way. Everyone interviewed in the film donated his or her time and we were able to screen the film at the NCRM in time for the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination commemoration.
He was there to help keep alive King's legacy and his dream of equal rights for African-Americans. 'Crucifixions have to have witnesses,' says Kyles. 'You can kill the dreamer but you cannot...kill the dream.'
The 81st Academy Awards (2009) Nominees and Winners
WON: Best Documentary Short & Audience Favorite Documentary Short
Best Documentary - The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306 . . . Audience Favorite Award - The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306
Nashville Film Festival - Best Short Documentary
Best Documentary Short
a powerful, Oscar-nominated short film . . . We are in the age of the blockbuster documentary, but bigger is not always better. A string quartet can cut deeper than a symphony. This is a chamber piece in which the dominant voice is, inevitably, King's own.