Icarus Films Tabs Sept. 3 As The DVD Street Date For Documentary Filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein’s Ghosts Of Attica

Emmy-nominee and two-time Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards-winner, Brad Lichtenstein’s 2001 look back at the bloody carnage of the Attica Prison riot of September 1971, Ghosts of Attica, will be available on DVD from Icarus Films on Sept. 3.

In retrospect, Attica was a disaster waiting to happen.   Originally designed to house 1,200 prisoners, by September of 1971 the number of inmates was nearly twice that number.   A small, seemingly innocuous event on the morning of Sept. 9, 1971 triggered the takeover, which saw 42 guards and prison staff members taken hostage.

For four days negotiations drug on and then broke down, even though most of the demands of the prisoners had been agreed to.   Shortly before ten in the morning on Sept. 13 the prison was retaken … and in the aftermath ten guards were dead along with 29 prisoners. 

 

Only after the smoke had cleared and order had been restored did the true horror of the re-taking of the Attica become clear.   New York State Police had, in their zeal to put down the rebellion, killed nine of the ten guards and 25 prisoners in their barrage of fire (one guard had been killed in the early going, while four prisoners were murdered by their fellow inmates for various reprisal reasons). 

Lichenstein’s “time capsule” documentary uses vintage newsreel and broadcast footage from the period and contemporary interviews with guards, inmates and officials some thirty years after the events.   Ghosts of Attica, as a result, is a scholarly-like review of the Attica Prison riot and its aftermath that expertly draws out the experiences from all those who were there and experienced it first hand.

Narration is by Susan Sarandon.

Also getting a DVD release date from Icarus films this past week is documentary filmmakers Josh Fox and Steve Liptay’s DIVEST! The Climate Movement on Tour … the DVD will be available on Sept. 10.

350.org was founded back 2008 by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben (“The End of Nature,” “Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth,” etc.) and colleagues with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million.   

Filmmakers Fox and Liptay caught up with McKibben on his “Do the Math” national bus tour, which began in November of 2012 and hop-skipped across the country to packed venues.    DIVEST! The Climate Movement on Tour captures the presentations — which features such guest lecturers such as author Naomi Kline (“No Logo,” “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate,” etc.) Desmond Tutu, radio personality Ira Glass (“This American Live”), environmentalist Winona LaDuke (executive director of Honor the Earth) and Reverend Lennox Yearwood — and the bus journey itself which features candid interviews.