There is the tendency to focus exclusively on the preeminent contribution Martin Luther King, Jr made to the American Civil Rights movement. On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the Viet Nam War at the Riverside Church in New York City referenced in this trailer. His final year he also unfolded his Poor People's Campaign.

On the 21st of June, 1964, three SNCC organizers, working with the NAACP as Freedom Summer volunteers, all under age 25, disappeared in Mississippi while investigating a church burning. They had come to Mississippi to help in registering African American voters. The bodies of James Chaney, a black Mississippian, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two white Northerners, were found buried together on August 4th. I lived across the street in Yellow Springs, OH from Micheal Schwerner's brother, Steve Schwerner, my former Dean of Students at Antioch College, Coretta Scott King's Alma Mater. It can get very personal.

Narrated by Julian Bond, the 14-hour television series covers all of the major events of the civil rights movement from 1954-1985. Series topics range from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954 to the Voting Rights Act in 1965; from community power in schools to "Black Power" in the streets; from early acts of individual courage through to the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions. The series has gone on to win six Emmys and numerous other awards, including an Academy Award nomination, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the top duPont-Columbia award for excellence in broadcast journalism.

The series, available through most libraries and some video store rentals, includes:

Awakenings (1954-1956)
Individual acts of courage inspire black Southerners to fight for their rights: Mose Wright testifies against the white men who murdered young Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

Fighting Back (1957-1962)
States' rights loyalists and federal authorities collide in the 1957 battle to integrate Little Rock's Central High School, and again in James Meredith's 1962 challenge to segregation at the University of Mississippi. Both times, a Southern governor squares off with a U.S. president, violence erupts -- and integration is carried out.

Ain't Scared of Your Jails (1960-1961)
Black college students take a leadership role in the civil rights movement as lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South. "Freedom Riders" also try to desegregate interstate buses, but they are brutally attacked as they travel.

No Easy Walk (1961-1963)
The civil rights movement discovers the power of mass demonstrations as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges as its most visible leader. Some demonstrations succeed; others fail. But the triumphant March on Washington, D.C., under King's leadership, shows a mounting national support for civil rights. President John F. Kennedy proposes the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi: Is This America? (1963-1964)
Mississippi's grass-roots civil rights movement becomes an American concern when college students travel south to help register black voters and three activists are murdered. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenges the regular Mississippi delegation at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City.

Bridge to Freedom (1965)
A decade of lessons is applied in the climactic and bloody march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. A major victory is won when the federal Voting Rights Bill passes, but civil rights leaders know they have new challenges ahead.

The Time Has Come (1964-66)
After a decade-long cry for justice, a new sound is heard in the civil rights movement: the insistent call for power. Malcolm X takes an eloquent nationalism to urban streets as a younger generation of black leaders listens. In the South, Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) move from "Freedom Now!" to "Black Power!" as the fabric of the traditional movement changes.

Two Societies (1965-68)
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come north to help Chicago's civil rights leaders in their nonviolent struggle against segregated housing. Their efforts pit them against Chicago's powerful mayor, Richard Daley. When a series of marches through all-white neighborhoods draws violence, King and Daley negotiate with mixed results. In Detroit, a police raid in a black neighborhood sparks an urban uprising that lasts five days, leaving 43 people dead. The Kerner Commission finds that America is becoming "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the commission, ignores the report.

Power! (1966-68)
The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins election as the first black mayor of a major American city. The Black Panther Party, armed with law books, breakfast programs, and guns, is born in Oakland. Substandard teaching practices prompt parents to gain educational control of a Brooklyn school district but then lead them to a showdown with New York City's teachers' union.

The Promised Land (1967-68)
Martin Luther King stakes out new ground for himself and the rapidly fragmenting civil rights movement. One year before his death, he publicly opposes the war in Vietnam. His Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) embarks on an ambitious Poor People's Campaign. In the midst of political organizing, King detours to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, where he is assassinated. King's death and the failure of his final campaign mark the end of a major stream of the movement.

Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More (1964-72)
A call to pride and a renewed push for unity galvanize black America. World heavyweight champion Cassius Clay challenges America to accept him as Muhammad Ali, a minister of Islam who refuses to fight in Vietnam. Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., fight to bring the growing black consciousness movement and their African heritage inside the walls of this prominent black institution. Black elected officials and community activists organize the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in an attempt to create a unified black response to growing repression against the movement.

A Nation of Law? (1968-71)
Black activism is increasingly met with a sometimes violent and unethical response from local and federal law enforcement agencies. In Chicago, two Black Panther Party leaders are killed in a pre-dawn raid by police acting on information supplied by an FBI informant. In the wake of President Nixon's call to "law and order," stepped-up arrests push the already poor conditions at New York's Attica State Prison to the limit. A five-day inmate takeover calling the public's attention to the conditions leaves 43 men dead: four killed by inmates, 39 by police.

The Keys to the Kingdom (1974-80)
In the 1970s, antidiscrimination legal rights gained in past decades by the civil rights movement are put to the test. In Boston, some whites violently resist a federal court school desegregation order. Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, proves that affirmative action can work, but the Bakke Supreme Court case challenges that policy.

Back to the Movement (1979-mid 80s)
Power and powerlessness. Miami's black community -- pummeled by urban renewal, a lack of jobs, and police harassment -- explodes in rioting. But in Chicago, an unprecedented grassroots movement triumphs. Frustrated by decades of unfulfilled promises made by the city's Democratic political machine, reformers install Harold Washington as Chicago's first black mayor.

Horton Hears A Who

"Even if you can't see them,
or hear them at all,
a person's a person,
no matter how small..."

My motto.

Published in 1954, I entered the world while Dr. Zuess was still penning his final touches on this masterpiece and may have started life, as small as anyone ever gets, as he wrote those lines. I have not seen the movie yet, although I intend to, but I have read the book a gazillion plus one times. It is, in my opinion, one of the finest American poems ever written. If you have children 12 or under, or you are an aunt or uncle, God-Parent or in any other way feel responsible for raising or enlightening a young person, then you must take them to go see this one. Then buy them the book and read it to them a gazillion plus one times.

Not only does it have an underlying message of the equality of all people, no matter how put upon by the majority or bigger world players, it reminds us adults that being our brothers keeper is our job, everyones. Going further still, the story points out that even the smallest of contributions made toward caring for your community can, in the end, be the deciding nudge that is needed for salvation to occur.

Delirious

The word paparazzi comes from the nickname Paparazzo for a celebrity photographer in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," which didn't merely give us the name, but almost invented the concept. This is the best DiCillo movie I've seen, and he's made some good ones: "Box of Moonlight," "The Real Blonde", "Living in Oblivion"

The incomparable Steve Buscemi plays a paparazzi in this remarkable film. people whose job scream "bottom-feeder" His character, Les Galantine, a name itself which tells you all you might really care to know about the man. has the dubious "job" of snapping candid photos of famous people. Suffice it to say his life is pretty bleak and lonely. All along, we understand that the reason Les is a paparazzo is that he must be profoundly lonely. It's not just that he's pressing his nose up against the glass to be part of what appears to be a better world - it's also that he doesn't know any other way to make friends or otherwise be somebody. Toby, Michael Pitt, plays a homeless street kid, sincere and maybe a little simple, a blank slate (To-Be) willing to work for free. One of the first to figure that out is, appropriately, a casting director, Gina Gershon. Their story centers around a starlet du jour, K'Harma Leeds, Alison Lohman, which, if you know what karma means, suggests she will eventually be a big time lead.

Although Toby appears to be an innocent kid with a wide-open heart, as he uses first Les to get ahead and then the sexy casting director, we begin to wonder if his climb to success hasn't been quite as accidental as it seems.

What "Delirious" has along with knowledge of overnight celebrities and those who feed on them, is insight into the self-contempt of the feeders.  Anyone who's ever cashed a paycheck maybe able to relate. Those on top though are just as dependent on the market as those on the bottom. They pretend to hate the endlessly waiting photographers, but the truth is they need their photos in the next day's paper to prove they exist. It's a sad state of affairs with no endgame, except the dissolution of fame through under or overexposure.

The performances are extraordinary, especially those of Buscemi and Pitt, who deliver complicated characters who aren't entirely what they seem when we first meet them. Buscemi's is one of the best performances of his career, and that's saying a lot. Everything about his is perfect, both in the pain he carries deep within himself and the false bravado that gets him through his days. Then again there are some people born in this world that are truly innocent. These strange and blessed people somehow keep going, keep
the light of hope and trust in their hearts despite the fiercest disappointments. Can you find them here? "Delirious" would be a very good film even if it were only about fame. What makes it even better is that it's about human nature, about the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to smooth over disappointment, to try to douse the pain of loneliness, the isolation of being on the wrong side of the pane/pain.

For Reviews and Recommendations of Previous Installments:

Goya's Ghosts, The Nines, The Bothersome Man.

In the comment section:

Death at a Funeral

La Vie en Rose

In Bruges, For The Bible Tells Me So, Into The Wild, Lars and the Real Girl

In The Valley of Elah, My Country My Country, No End In Sight, Taxi to the Dark Side, Body of War

The Kite Runner, The Counterfeiters, Juno

Closing Remarks:

Given that the greater part of our site's purpose here on the Street of Prophets is to provide a place where people who might describe themselves as religious progressives can come together to explore not only faith but the larger questions that revolve around it and our hopes of impacting the world in a positive, progressive way, I am  providing these weekly film reviews. I thought that submitting reviews of off-the-beaten-track films that often nudge this kind of thought and discussion might be a plus. I'll be offering this each week on Fridays and would happily entertain recommendations for future reviews. Feel free to post comments about the films reviewed here today as well as your own recommendations of films you feel may fall along these lines.

Some suggestions on what you consider "Classics" would be nice... I'm waiting... waiting...

Someone get the lights...

Oops. Was that your hat I was sitting on?