Eighty-year-old preacher Edgar Ray Killen is at center of documentary about murdered civil rights workers
NESHOBA: THE PRICE OF FREEDOM (Micki Dickoff & Tony Pagano, 2009)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between Fifth Ave. & University Pl.
Opened Friday, August 13
212-924-3363
www.firstrunfeatures.com
www.cinemavillage.com
In 1964, civil right workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered in cold blood in Neshoba, a small county in Mississippi. Although everyone in the town seemed to know that the atrocity was committed by a group of twenty-one members of the Ku Klux Klan, no one had been convicted of the crimes, which were famously fictionalized in Alan Parker’s 1988 film MISSISSIPPI BURNING. In 1999, Carolyn Goodman, Andrew’s mother, approached documentary filmmaker Micki Dickoff and shared her story and her continuing battle for justice. Five years later, as the fortieth anniversary of the killings led to new investigations, Dickoff (DEADLY AMBITION, STEP BY STEP) teamed up with cinematographer Tony Pagano (20/20) and turned their cameras on the citizens of Neshoba and the families of the victims as state attorney general Jim Hood and local activist group the Philadelphia Coalition sought to reveal the truth about what had happened and bring those responsible to justice. They focused their attention on eighty-year-old preacher Edgar Ray Killen, believed by many to have incited the mob to murder. Killen, who gave the filmmakers unlimited access to himself, boldly declares his innocence — while also proclaiming that Goodman and Schwerner, who were white New Yorkers, and Chaney, a black Mississippi native, got what they deserved. Dickoff and Pagano meet with an alarming number of elderly white locals who feel exactly the same way, in addition to younger Neshobans who would rather let the story go away, seeing no reason to go after the eight surviving alleged perpetrators. NESHOBA: THE PRICE OF FREEDOM, which has won awards at film festivals all around the country, is a frightening, disturbing look into the heart of racism, which is still alive and well in such places as Neshoba, Mississippi. It is also a fascinating examination of a courageous battle for justice, closure, and the truth. As Barack Obama has said about the victims, “Their legacy is our heritage.”