King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis

The documentary covers Martin Luther King Jr. from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 to his assassination in 1968, entirely through newsreel footage of the time. No commentary, no reconstruction; the material is used as it was. Sidney Lumet and Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed, with Ely Landau producing. The way it was shown was unusual. On 24 March 1970 it screened as a one-time-only event in over 500 theatres on the same day. Ticket sales sent around 2 million dollars to the Martin Luther King Jr. Special Fund. The framing narration comes from ten actors including Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Paul Newman and Charlton Heston. It holds a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It entered the National Film Registry in 1999. It was unavailable for decades. Richard Kaplan's restoration work between 2010 and 2012, in partnership with Kino Lorber, returned it on DVD and Blu-ray, with a 24-minute educational abridgement titled Legacy of a Dream included. Who it is for: anyone who wants the civil rights movement from primary sources. Who it is not for: viewers expecting a shaped narrative. It runs close to three hours and the newsreel does not take you by the hand.