PUTNEY — Next Stage Arts Project presents a screening of “The Central Park Five,” a documentary by David McMahon, Ken Burns, and Burns' elder daughter, Sarah, on Friday, Nov. 29, at 7 p.m.
This event is a benefit for Next Stage Arts, which is organizing a full schedule of year-round events such as classical and folk/rock music concerts, spoken word events, vaudeville, and theatrical performances.
The suggested donation is $10.
Sarah Burns, as one of the film's co-directors and the author of “The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding” (2011, Knopf), will introduce the film, answer questions, and sign copies of her book.
On April 19, 1989, a young woman, Trisha Meili, was raped and beaten nearly to death while running in Central Park. Five teenagers, black and Hispanic, were charged and eventually convicted in the attack. A media frenzy ensued, and the term “wilding” was coined, fueling racial divisions.
The convictions were vacated in 2002 when the real assailant confessed and was tied to the attack.
Meili published her story in 2003: “I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility” (Scribner).
On PBS's page promoting the documentary, Sarah Burns says of the film, “This case is a lens through which we can understand the ongoing fault line of race in America. These young men were convicted long before the trial, by a city blinded by fear and, equally, frightened by race. They were convicted because it was all too easy for people to see them as violent criminals simply because of the color of their skin.”
McMahon, who helped produce the film, is married to Sarah Burns, and joined Ken Burns and Florentine Films as an assistant editor in 2001.
On that same PBS page, he says “The Central Park Five” is “about five young men who lose their youth but maintain their dignity in the face of a horrific and unimaginable situation.”
Among those interviewed in the film are the Central Park Five and members of their families; New York City mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins; journalists Jim Dwyer, Natalie Byfield and LynNell Hancock; the Rev. Calvin Butts; and historian Craig Steven Wilder.
Sarah Burns graduated from Yale University in 2004 with a degree in American studies, and went on to work for Moore & Goodman, a small civil rights law firm based in New York.
She began exploring the story of the Central Park Five as an undergraduate. The bias of the media in reporting on the Central Park Five became the subject of her senior essay at Yale.
Later, rather than pursue law school, she worked to expand her story into a book. And now it's a film reviewers overwhelmingly laud: Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times calls it “Careful, thoughtful, and devastating.” Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal praises it as “A harrowing piece of investigative work."
Sarah Burns says that although her father is a filmmaker, she'd never particularly thought of herself moving in that direction.
“I majored in American studies in college. But I began to understand that a documentary was important because here you could hear the Central Park Five themselves tell their side of the story.”
She worked on the film with her father and McMahon for 2{1/2} years. “It was a joyful creative experience,” she says. “The Central Park Five” premiered in 2012 and was later aired on PBS.
Having worked on the project now in print and film, Sarah says both versions are distinct from one another, owing to the form in which they were made. That said, she recommends people see the movie before reading the book:
“The book goes into details about [the Central Park Five's] horrendous experience in a way a film never can, but the film, because it is so immediate, is a much more moving experience than the book.”