An Emmy Award-award winning documentary film about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life will be shown at The Westport Country Playhouse on Monday, January 20, the day the nation celebrates the civil rights icon.
The documentary film is called “King in the Wilderness,” and is based on the volatile last three years of King’s life. It follows King from the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to his assassination in April of 1968.
Other events reflected upon in the film include moments from the historical civil rights movement such as the Chicago Freedom Movement, the James Meredith march, the anti-Vietnam War protests and King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech.
The film also revisits the 1967 riots, preparation for the Poor People’s Campaign, the Memphis sanitation strike, and King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
Created by award-winning director and producer Peter Kunhardt, the film originally aired on HBO in 2018. Westport resident,Trey Ellis, a writer and Columbia University professor and one of the film’s producers, said he was a little surprised when The Westport Country Playhouse called and said they wanted to run the film this year, as it had a few years ago, and said , “The film has struck a chord with people.”
“I think it resonates even more this year than ever in that, we think we have it bad,” Ellis said. ”He lived through obviously much more turbulent times, and just kept doing the work. And I think that idea of just keep doing the work not knowing what the outcome is gonna be, but knowing that it's each individual's job to just do the work. I think that's the lesson that you come away with after watching the film.”
Ellis said that most of what everyone thought they knew about King’s life was wrong. And that King died thinking of himself as a failure.
“People always say, ‘Oh, if King had only lived, you know, how things would be different,’ Ellis said. “Well, he did live for three years after his greatest successes and had a really, really tough time. The world was not ready for his message.”
The film, “King In the Wilderness” has never before seen footage of King. Ellis attributes that to the fact that back in the 1960s, a lot of news footage was done on film, but all of the film wasn’t developed if the newsrooms didn't think they were going to use it.
The archivists on this documentary film were able to find actual undeveloped raw footage of news reports from that time.
Ellis said, “They just look pristine and beautiful.”
He believes that what people really respond to in the film is that they don't have a lot of footage of him making speeches.
“It's footage of him being sad, talking to his friends, playing pool, really behind the scenes or being a dad,” Ellis said. “So you really see him.”
One of the mandates among the filmmakers on the project was to take King off the proverbial pedestal and bring him into people's living rooms.
“They set out to interview all the people they could find who were still alive,” Ellis said, “Who actually knew him, lived with him, and loved him.”
Ellis added remarkably, that at the time of King’s death , “He didn't understand all the great things that he had done for this world. He just did his best.”
The filmmakers believe this is what many people take from the film, the idea that even when times are turbulent, and failure looms on the horizon, King’s life and legacy remind us to, “ just do our best. Then we're all just gonna push in this direction of bending the arc of the universe towards justice, as opposed away from justice.”
The screening of “King in the Wilderness” at The Westport Country Playhouse is on January 20 at 7 p.m. Admission is free and the seating unreserved.
