What's Up Doc? Film & Discussion Series

Join us for another series featuring four documentaries on Human Rights. Each film is followed by an audience discussion. Celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., examine the controversy over divisive Confederate symbols, re-examine the wrongful execution of two Italian immigrants in 1927, and learn of the failed U.S. response to refugees during the Holocaust.

This program is presented in collaboration with the Clinton Human Rights Committee.

Film schedule:

• Sat. 1/6: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: A Historical Perspective. An Authorized Biography of a Civil Rights Hero. Director: Thomas Friedman. 1994. 60 min. He was the conscience of the struggle for civil rights—and one of its many heroic martyrs. This documentary offers a one-of-a-kind examination of Dr. King's extraordinary life. Using rare and largely unseen film footage and photographs, this film (endorsed by the King Foundation) explores how Dr. King's ideas, beliefs and methods evolved in the face of the rapidly changing climate of the Civil Rights Movement.
• Sat. 1/13: Look Away, Look Away. Director: Patrick O'Conner. 2021. 89 minutes. When the horrific murder of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Caroline in 2015 sparks a reckoning around the meaning of the Confederate flag, battle lines are drawn in Mississippi to determine the fate of the late state flag with the most powerful and divisive symbol of the Confederacy. The film introduces us to an array of activist on both sides of the debate revealing how race, heritae, and long-simmering grievances over the Civil War shapes our sense of who we are as Americans.
• Sat. 1/20: Sacco and Vanzetti: The Trial of Two Italian Immigrants in the 1920s. Director: Peter Miller. 2006. 80 min. Two Italian immigrant anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were accused of murder in 1920, and executed in Boston in 1927 after a notoriously prejudiced trial. Their ordeal came to symbolize the bigotry and intolerance directed at immigrants and dissenters in America. Millions of people around the world protested on their behalf, and their story continues to have great resonance as civil liberties and the rights of immigrants are again under attack.
• Sat. 1/27: America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference. Director: Martin Ostrow. 1994. 90 minutes. Using interviews, official photos and documents, home movies, and archival film, this documentary explores the social and political factors that shaped America's response to the Holocaust. The story of Kurt Klein represents America's reaction to European Jews clamoring for rescue.