Famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns calls his latest release The Central Park Five his most “journalistic” project ever.
The film, which opens in limited release in New York Friday, details the story behind the ‘Central Park Jogger’ assault and rape case which nearly left a young woman dead on April 19, 1989.
The Central Park Five focuses on the five black and Latino teens who were convicted of the crime, served their sentences but were later exonerated after the real rapist came forward in 2002. Burns shares credit on his latest project with his daughter Sarah and her husband filmmaker David McMahon.
“It was tremendous,” Burns told theGrio’s Todd Johnson of working with his daughter and son-in-law. “There was also our editor Michael Lodine and our coordinating producer Stephanie Jenkins. We felt like we became a family working on this project and bonded with the Central Park Five and we feel like we’re the ‘Central Park Ten.’
The five teens, now all in their 30s, are featured heavily throughout the film, (four on camera, one via phone recording) sharing their stories of seemingly normal lives up until the date of the brutal incident. Four of the five teens made videotaped confessions, each implicating one another in bizarre and troubling video which Burns obtained and uses almost hauntingly in the film.
The teens claimed afterwards they were coerced by detectives and police officials — that they were promised their cooperation would lead to their release. (the film notes some of them had been questioned/held up to 30 hours before ‘confessing’)
In September, lawyers for New York City subpoenaed “notes and outtakes from the film” to help their defense efforts against civil suits filed on behalf of the five who were wrongfully accused. Each men is seeking $50 million in damages from the city. (the men served between 6 and 13 years in prison, before their sentences were vacated by a judge in 2002)
Burns wasn’t surprised by the subpoena.
“I think they’ve been delaying the civil suit for so long,” Burns said. “We’ve just become another delaying tactic.”
Burns also takes issue with city lawyers who would describe his film as more activism than journalism. One city lawyer, Celeste Koeleveld, told New York Magazine’s Boris Kachka that Burns and his team were “advocates for settlement,” and not covered by the same laws which were designed to protect journalists.
Burns told theGrio he took issue with her characterization:
“What’s wrong with something that would settle this festering racial wound in the city of New York? I have not advocated for on behalf of any kind of settlement. I have just said this [case] seems important to put behind us […].
“We asked [city officials] to comment, to interview — they refused. So now they say it’s ‘advocacy’ because they’re not in it. We bent over backwards to represent their point of view. We bent over backwards to include their point of view at the time.”
Burns said the film is bigger than just the five young men whose lives were interrupted and changed forever (including the actual victim that night) – Burns said the April, ’89 incident is one in unfortunately too many that continue to happen today.
“When we took this film to Cannes Film Festival, the French just thought this [film] was the ratification of everything they feared about the United States,” Burns said. “They asked me if [these incidents] still go on and I said ‘Yes – there’s a young man named Trayvon Martin who would not be dead but for the color of his skin. The struggle goes on.”
The five men – Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam – gathered last week at the School of Visual Arts Theater in Manhattan. It was the first time they had all been together since their arraignment.
Burns said the film and their story can prove as both an inspiration and education for young men who encounter the police.
“Why don’t we start teaching Miranda [rights]?” Burns asks. “Because, in fact, the [five teens] were the most vulnerable of all the kids picked up that night. The other bad kids had been in the system before — they knew how to Miranda, they knew how to lawyer up. The [five teens] were trying to cooperate. They were trying to cooperate and this is what happened in the face of that cooperation.”
The Central Park Five documentary opens in New York theaters Friday.
Follow theGrio’s Todd Johnson on Twitter @rantoddj