"Freedom Riders" Premiers on PBS, Monday May 16

Freedom Riders, which we screened at our 2010 festival, premiers Monday May 16 on PBS' acclaimed history series American Experience.

The documentary received an excellent review in this weekend's The New York Times:

In May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality sought to challenge the segregation of interstate travel on public transport and sent forth activists, both black and white, and many of them students, on a bus journey through the South, where they were received with violence that law enforcers refused to tame.

It is hard to imagine a feature film conveying the events with a more vivid sense of drama or suspense. The commentators — the riders themselves, historians, politicians, civil rights leaders — have mostly been chosen for an uncanny ability to convey the tension in a present-tense reconstruction. Blowhards and professors of the obvious have been excised, and the archival photographs and news clips have been edited down to those most affecting and lyrical.

Check your local listings for show times.