Birth of the Living Dead

Rob Kuhns's 2013 documentary describes how Night of the Living Dead was made and why it hit so hard. George Romero and his crew worked around Pittsburgh on a very small budget with mostly non-professional people, and the documentary lays that production out in detail. The more interesting part is what the film landed on in 1968: in a year when Vietnam footage was reaching television, the civil rights struggle was hardening and assassinations were happening, a film with a Black lead took that tension directly onto itself. Romero says the casting was not a deliberate statement, while not denying what the result meant. The error in the copyright notice that put the film into the public domain, and what that did to its circulation, is covered too. Who it's for: viewers interested in horror history and independent production. Who it's not for: anyone who has not seen the film itself; the documentary refers to it throughout.