Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8031 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-03-21
• Rating: Exempt
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 60 minutes

Synopsis
A documentary which uses rare film footage and photographs to chronicle the life of Martin Luther King and the Civil Right's Movement.

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Class Resource
I use this particular film within my RE classes, or when I teach Year 8 history classes on the history of black peoples in the UK. I myself am from the States, and the story of MLK and his fight for true freedom for oppressed minorities is something I grew up learning from the age of 4. Yet, here in the UK, we do not really know the intricate details of how the American story of racism developed, prospered, flourished, and became a way of life, as it was our Wilberforce from Hull who ended this sort of outward treatment in the mainland some 150+ years ago.

This video helps to put into perspective just what injustices black men, women, and children had to put up with and in all fairness, intelligently pick apart piece by piece to gain the freedoms that they enjoy today, but had been guaranteed for generations. It also helps us in the UK to understand our own social problems in light of the Brixton Riots and Bradford Riots, giving us a spirit of empathy with oppression as well as overt and covert forces working to keep genuine and decent people from what our society sees as "right".

A social documentation that delivers
This is a sympathetically interpretive account of the role Dr King played in the struggle for civil rights for blacks in America in the 1960s. It takes a chronological rather than a thematic approach , selecting interesting footage from the considerable television archive to elucidate this complex period of American social history, and bears witness to the power of television as an instrument of change. Without television it is doubtful whether the struggle for civil rights for blacks in America would have achieved the necessary legislative victories in the timeframe in which they occurred. Television is what brought the struggle to the masses both domestically and internationally, and to the considerable embarrassment of those in places of high office. It was thus a democratising force of the kind the Internet was later to become, empowering people `from the bottom up' by bringing their message of struggle into people's living rooms both graphically and authentically, as the horrific scenes of state repression played out for all to see.
Too little time is spent on the seminal `I have a dream' speech, delivered in Washington by Dr King in 1963 to such national and international acclaim. Overall, though, this DVD is a well crafted, historically accurate account of the events as they unfold, and one that is well worth revisiting at a time when this struggle has, once again, taken a big step forward with the election of Barack Obama as president.

Very good but a few flaws!
This hour long perspective is excellent in many ways but there are two or three flaws - one of which would be easy to fix! The narrator's voice is not a voice you want to listen to for an hour, he sounds not bothered at times. Also some of Martin's best known speeches are read by the narrator rather than delivered by Martin with the passion and fervour he had - this is presumably because of copyright laws. So to hear excerpts of the 'I have a dream' speech delivered in an understated drawl is a bit of a shame!
On the whole this is excellent though - Martin's life held up a mirror to the unpleasantness of the prejudice that is in most people and his struggles were heroic and extraordinary.