Freedom Riders

What's Next for Firelight? -- A Word From Stanley Nelson

As we wrap up the summer, I am especially excited about our two newest projects: one film about the Black Panther Party and another one about Freedom Summer. This Fall promises to be exciting as we start doing interviews and collecting footage.

For me, these projects are so close together in terms of era—1964 and 1966, but they are incredibly different stories. In many ways they are about different paths to liberation for African Americans. These projects are important now because we want to capture the voices of those who were active in those struggles and are aging. They are also about how individuals can participate and make a call to action in very different ways: one group fighting for the vote and for change within the system and the other saying we need drastic revolutionary change in this country. In many ways, young people have mythologized them, but many don’t know the true story. We want to make these figures human and demonstrate that the people who participated were really young. Movements can happen if you participate and if you believe in them.

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New Report! Freedom Riders Community Engagement Campaign

By any measure the Freedom Riders documentary film was a phenomenal success—winning three Emmy awards, reaching three million viewers on PBS, screening at the White House and being featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show. But another gauge of the film’s impact is the role it played as an organizing tool.

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Black Youth Vote! Screens Freedom Riders!

On April 5, 2012, a diverse group of youth and elders gathered for a screening of Freedom Riders at the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C.

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Interview with Director Laurens Grant on New Film "Jesse Owens"

JESSE OWENS is a Firelight Films production for the PBS series American Experience. It centers on the African American track and field star, Jesse Owens, who triumphed at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin amidst the rise of Nazi propaganda. This is the first feature-length documentary directed by Laurens Grant for PBS. The film is also produced and written by veteran filmmaker Stanley Nelson with whom Laurens has worked with on a number of projects, including Freedom Riders, which garnered three Emmy Awards. JESSE OWENS aired on PBS on May 1, 2012.

Laurens is also a participant in the Firelight Media Producers' Lab where she is working on another film Rokia: Voice of a New Generation. Check out our exciting interview with Laurens below.

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FREEDOM RIDERS WINS PEABODY AWARD!

The PBS series American Experience, television's longest-running and most-watched history series, was honored last week with a George Foster Peabody Award, widely considered the most prestigious award for electronic media. Freedom Riders was among the series' showcase films.

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FREEDOM RIDERS ON BILL MOYERS' LIST OF 10 DOCS ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers listed Freedom Riders as one of his 10 picks for documentaries about champions of social justice. He wrote: "The 10 powerful films below are...certainly proof enough that social change is possible, even under the most challenging conditions." Check out the list here.

Firelight Spring 2012 Calendar

Upcoming Events

Join us at these upcoming events featuring films and staff from Firelight.

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FREEDOM RIDERS REACHED 3 MILLION VIEWERS -- "MOST WATCHED" ON AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN 2011

Freedom Riders, with three million viewers on PBS' American Experience, "was the most-watched in the franchise in 2011." Click here and scroll down to read the article "PBS On a Roll". Congrats to the Freedom Riders team!

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NEA Podcast: Interview with Stanley Nelson

Each Thursday, the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) releases a free podcast featuring interviews with everyone from NEA Jazz Masters to leading arts experts to National Medal of Arts winners and more. Check out this great interview with Stanley Nelson on his film Freedom Riders here: http://www.arts.gov/podweb/podCMS/pod.php?id=p0095.

Editors Lewis Erskine and Aljernon Tunsil Win "Best Edited Documentary" for FREEDOM RIDERS at ACE Eddie Awards

A special congrats to Firelight Films' beloved and talented editors Lewis Erskine and Aljernon Tunsil for bringing home the 62nd Annual American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Award for "Best Edited Documentary" for the film Freedom Riders. Winners were revealed during ACE’s black-tie awards ceremony on Saturday, February 18, 2012 in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Click here for the list of winners.