Mighty Times: The Children's March
USA, 2004, Video, 40 min
Director: Bobby Houston, Robert Hudson | Producer: Robert Hudson

Preceded by Family Portrait

On May 2nd, 1963, thousands of black children and students deserted their classrooms and flooded the streets of Birmingham, Alabama.

Mighty Times: The Children’s March reveals a never-before-told chapter in the Civil Rights movement and one of the most amazing acts of civil disobedience in American history. In 1963, heavy intimidation by Birmingham authorities left Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement floundering with few active participants.

Thousands of young people rose up to take their place. Braving several days of fire hoses, police dogs, and arrest, the children stunned authorities and the nation by marching in opposition to the state’s segregation laws. In doing so, they became the movement’s unsung heroes, touching off a week of mass demonstrations and rioting that shocked the nation and rocked the world.
The Children’s March includes archival footage, reenactments, and fascinating interviews with the grown women and men who, as children, changed the course of American history. It is a moving testament to the power of hope, activism, and courage.

Winner – 2005 Academy Award, Best Documentary Short

Family Portrait
USA, 2004, Video, 28 min
Director: Patricia Riggen | Producers: Patricia Riggen, Alvaro Donado

In 1968 Gordon Parks wrote an article for Life Magazine on race and poverty in the United States. For his story, Parks photographed the Fontenelle family, a disenfranchised African American family of twelve living in extreme poverty in a small Harlem apartment. The public’s response to the Life photo essay was so great that Parks worked with the magazine to purchase the family a home on Long Island.

In Patricia Riggen’s moving and insightful documentary, Richard and Diana, the only surviving members of the family, render their own family portrait as they recount the challenges the family faced. Through interviews with Richard Fontenelle, Diana Nash and Gordon Parks, we meet two survivors in a family that has struggled confronting the social obstacles of racism, poverty, addiction, and AIDS.