Crisis - Behind a Presidential Commitment

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Crisis - Behind a Presidential Commitment Features

• One of the most intimate and engaging films on John and Bobby Kennedy ever made, CRISIS is the first and only film ever shot candidly of a President making decisions during a crisis. In June of 1963, the President and his brother faced one of the gravest racial confrontations of the 20th century. Despite a federal court order, Alabama Governor George Wallace vowed he would personally bar the door

About Crisis - Behind A Presidential Commitment

Amazon.com Having earned John F. Kennedy's trust with his 1960 campaign-trail film Primary, pioneering cinema verité documentarian Robert Drew expressed his desire to document a president in crisis. When African American college students Vivian Malone and James Hood prepared to enroll at the all-white University of Alabama in June 1963, governor George Wallace supplied the crisis, defying a federal court order and vowing to prevent the students' enrollment. Kennedy granted unprecedented access to Drew and his unobtrusive four-team crew, who used handheld cameras to cover both sides of the conflict: Wallace self-righteously clings to the futility of segregation (and more than a few racist Alabamans support him), while a flurry of phone calls between JFK, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenback reveal a tightly coordinated plan to dismiss Wallace (in RFK's words) as "a second-rate figure." The result is the most intimate study of JFK and RFK ever filmed, capturing the powerful brothers as they forge a great victory for civil rights and racial equality. In defeat, Wallace is left stinging and irrelevant, a Southern dinosaur whose arrogance was his own undoing. For these and many other reasons, Crisis remains one of the most riveting visual records of the Kennedy administration, and Drew's short film Faces of November (included as a bonus feature) provides a sobering reminder: Five months after Crisis was filmed, JFK was dead and a nation was mourning. --Jeff Shannon Product Description An incredible and candid look at JFK and RFK as they struggle with the integration crisis in 1963. With Governor George Wallace blocking the doors to the all-white University of Alabama, this documentary shows the Kennedy brothers embroiled in the decision making process, uncertain if an course of action is the right one. 2003/b&w/64 min/NR/fullscreen.