THE MURDER OF EMMETT TILL
Original language title: [same]

Country of production: USA
Year: 2002
Language: English
53 mins.

The murder of young Chicagoan Emmett Louis Till was a crucial event in 20th century American history. In the summer of 1955, Till visited relatives in Money, Mississippi. Till was young and brash, and did not know how he was supposed to act toward Southern white women. Not long after whistling at one in a store, Till was kidnapped, beaten, shot, and mangled. A few days later, his remains were found in a river. When the corpse was returned to Chicago, his mother decided to draw attention to her son's slaying. She held a public, open-casket visitation, which drew scores of people and provoked ire and outrage at the system that had killed him. In brutal and riveting detail, THE MURDER OF EMMETT TILL examines the young man's murder and its aftermath - including the trial and the shocking magazine articles in its wake. The film also connects this event with the larger Civil Rights movement and other essential currents in American history.

Director: Stanley Nelson
Script: Marcia A. Smith
Cinematography: Robert Shepard
Music: Tony Phillips
Editing: Lewis Erskine
Sound: J.T. Takagi, Sekou Shepard, C.A. Mose
Producer: Stanely Nelson
Production Company: Firelight Media
Source:
Firelight Media
324 Convent Ave
New York, NY 10031, USA
stanley@firelight.org

Stanley Nelson, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, is a 2002 MacArthur Fellow. Nelson holds a film degree from City College in New York, and has been a fellow at the American Film Institute and Columbia University. He has also served on the Fulbright media fellowship committee, and was a Regents' Lecturer at the University of California. He has taught film at Howard University, trained broadcast journalists in Rwanda, and is a frequent speaker on new media and the digital future for minority filmmakers.

Saturday, March 22
3pm
Facets Cinematheque
with discussion