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| A scene from The Central Park Five |
By Ed Rampell
In the nonfiction films of Ken Burns, from The Civil War to The Central Park Five, race is a recurring theme, . The latter is the latest and perhaps most contemporary of the history obsessed filmmaker, and it is all about race and racism. As a “Native” New Yorker, of course I was aware of 1989’s Central Park Jogger case, wherein five Black and Latino teens were charged with being part of a “wolf pack” that went on a “wilding” rampage -- as the racist media put it -- brutally assaulting and gang raping a white woman jogging in the Park. The quintet of Harlem teenagers were convicted and served prison time.
Although I moved from N.Y. decades ago, I visited from time to time and stayed in touch with City residents, but somehow I never knew about what eventually happened regarding this case and to the five Harlemites, who are now grown men. Leave it to Ken Burns, America’s TV documentarian par excellence, to bring us up to date with the startling revelations regarding what reallyhappened and what the Central Park Five are currently up to. It’s genuinely astonishing and horrifying. The outcome is one of the worst examples of the press burying, instead of reporting, the news. While the front page stories about rape and mayhem were front page news, subsequent events are submerged on page 12 -- if at all.
Leave it to Burns and his co-creators, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, to exhume this riveting story with a riveting feature length documentary that will have viewers sitting on the edges of their seats, filled with outrage and unable to take their reddened eyes off of the screen. After watching this must see movie, audiences may join the young Rev. Al Sharpton in chanting: “No justice, no peace!” Hopefully, Burns’ doc will help render both justice and peace for the Central Park Five who are, in that ultimate Alfred Hitchcock tradition, literally “the wrong men.”
If you see only one film at AFI Film Festival this year, don’t miss Burns’ bravura The Central Park Five!
The Central Park Five screens: Monday, Nov. 5, 1:15 p.m. at the Chinese 2.
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