Page 59 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 2 Winter 2013

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FACETIME
I wasn’t aware of the story of the
Central Park five at all until 2003.
I was an American studies major at
Yale working in New York for a civil
rights lawyer involved in the case. I
became really interested and wrote
my senior essay about it, focusing on
racism in media coverage. I continued
to be fascinated by the case and, after
deciding not to go to law school, I in-
stead spent five years writing a book,
figuring out how to be a journalist, and
how to create a narrative.
Early on in the process, I decided the
story had to be a film. Film and books
have very different ways of telling a story.
The book has much more space to get into
the details, but there is something much
more visceral about the film that allows
us to interview the five so the audience
gets to hear from them in their own words.
It shows not only them, but New York in the
eighties, so you can understand something
of the time and place. Having all those
senses engaged is a different way of ex-
periencing the story.
This was the right way to get into the
family business. I have been learning
from my dad my whole life about story-
telling, but had carefully stayed away from
film until now because I didn’t want to do
it just because it was there. But this felt
very natural. I had a story I felt passion-
ate about. I could have ended up working
in film or with my dad in other ways, but
it worked better because I had a story I
really wanted to tell.
Even though this was international
news at the time, it felt like a story
that hadn’t ever been told properly.
So many people knew about this case, but
when the convictions were vacated, it
was not such a big story. A lot of people
assume it was a technicality. This was an
opportunity to set the record straight.
This story contributed to people’s fears
of New York and of black and Latino
youth in 1980s New York. It’s important
to know it wasn’t true. The film is in part
about the media’s failure to apply jour-
nalistic skepticism, and what underlying
suspicions and assumptions contribute
to something like this. It was too easy to
believe these boys had committed this
crime because of what they looked like.
It’s a problem that the media needs and
relies on public officials as sources and
they don’t always apply that jour-
nalistic skepticism. I hope that people
in the media are a little bit more aware
of the fact that false convictions happen.
Sarah Burns ’00:
The Central Park Five
When I first met the five, I expected
they’d be hardened by this experience,
but they’re not. It’s obviously been
difficult for them, but the way they
handle it is without anger. People are
surprised by their grace and dignity.
At film festivals and in theaters, we
bring some of the five and they answer
questions. The best part of the process
is witnessing what happens between them
and the audience – they get standing
ovations, people want to hug them. There’s
something very healing in it.
People tell the five, ‘I remember this
story and I believed it and I just want
to say I’m really sorry.’ That’s a pretty
amazing thing. It’s clear that it means a
lot to them, having been treated like they
were the worst animals, to be in these set-
tings where people are applauding them.
A goal of the film is to spread the word.
We want people to have conversations about
it, about why these convictions happened,
and what we can do to create change.
The City of New York, in defending the
civil lawsuit, subpoenaed everything we
collected – it was outrageously broad.
We pushed back and it was narrowed to
interviews with people involved in the case.
They accused us of not being journalists
and said we were not protected by the
reporter’s privilege, claiming we are
advocates for the five. That’s outrageous.
This film is a work of nonfiction, about
reporting the facts. But even if it were
advocacy, the idea that journalists can’t
be advocates is a hugely problematic claim.
[Editor’s note: On February 19, a federal
judge blocked New York City from getting
footage gathered for the film.]
Yes, I would now identify myself as a
filmmaker. This film is keeping us very
busy, but we are working together on
another film about [the first black man
to play in Major League Baseball] Jackie
Robinson. I like the collaborative aspect
of film much more than the solitary
nature of writing a book.
Although a somewhat reluctant
first-time filmmaker, Sarah Burns ’00
has been around the family business
for her entire life. The daughter of
acclaimed documentary filmmaker
Ken Burns spoke with Alumni Horae
about her debut film, The Central
Park Five. The film, a collaboration
with her father and her husband
David McMahon, explores the wrong-
ful convictions of five teenagers impli-
cated in the 1989 Central Park jogger
case, a brutal rape and beating that
left the female victim close to death
and became a symbol of all that was
wrong with big city life at that time.
The convictions were vacated in
December 2002, but the case is still
making headlines more than two
decades later with the federal sub-
poena of all documents and interviews
related to the filmto aid the City of New
York in defending a civil suit filed
by the falsely convicted teens. Burns
initially researched the case for her
2012 book of the same title.
MICHAEL LIONSTAR