The Central Park Five

Ed Koch Director: Sarah Burns, Ken Burns, David McMahon Sarah Burns, Ken Burns, David McMahon,

Overview

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns (Prohibition) teams with his daughter Sarah and her husband David McMahon to examine the facts in the case of five minority teens from Harlem who in 1989 were accused of committing a heinous rape in Central Park, and the failure of the authorities and the media to ensure that justice was served. Hastily tried and convicted as racial tensions in New York City spiked, the innocent teens all served time in prison before a serial rapist shocked authorities by admitting sole responsibility for the brutal sexual assault.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/23/2013
UPC:	0841887018579
Original Release:	2012
Source:	Pbs (Direct)
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Time:	2:00:00
Sales rank:	2,523

Special Features

Interview with the filmakers; After The Central Park Five

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Ed Koch	Participant
David Dinkins	Participant
Craig Steven Wilder	Participant
Calvin O. Butts	Participant
Jim Dwyer	Participant
Natalie Byfield	Participant
Michael Warren	Participant
Lynnell Hancock	Participant
Kevin Richardson	Participant
Raymond Santana	Participant
Yusef Salaam	Participant
Korey Wise	Participant

Technical Credits

Sarah Burns

Ken Burns

David McMahon

Sarah Burns	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Ken Burns	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
David McMahon	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Stephanie Jenkins	Score Composer
Michael Levine	Editor
Anthony Savini	Cinematographer
Buddy Squires	Cinematographer
Doug Wamble	Score Composer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- The Central Park Five
1. A Proxy War [3:39]
2. The Neighborhood [8:56]
3. The Night In The Park [6:10]
4. The Investigation [4:37]
5. Antron, Kevin And Raymond Confess [12:30]
6. Korey And Yusef Are Interrogated [4:33]
7. Video Statements [8:18]
8. The Story Breaks [14:19]
9. The Case Against The Five [7:33]
10. The First Trial [6:16]
11. The Second Trial [7:35]
12. Prison [4:09]
13. Home [4:52]
14. The Convictions Are Vacated [4:09]
15. A Mirror On Our Society [10:57]
16. End Credits [6:31]
17. Chapter 17 [3:34]

Menu

Disc #1 -- The Central Park Five
   Play Film
   Scene Selection
   Special Features
      Interviews With The Filmmakers
         Play All
         Making The Film
         A New York Wilding
         The Family Business
         Subpoena
      Additional Feature
         After The Central Park Five: Four Of The Central Park Five Discuss The Film and Their Lives Today
   Setup
      Play With English Subtitles
         English Subtitles: On
         English Subtitles: Off
      Play With Spanish Subtitles
         Spanish Subtitles: On
         Spanish Subtitles: Off
   PBS.org

Editorial Reviews

Tales of legal incompetence, judicial negligence, and the lives destroyed in their wake are inherently rich material for documentaries, especially when the victims who spent years in prison are still alive to tell their stories firsthand. The Central Park Five is a great example of this seemingly inherent truth. Directed, written, and produced by the triumvirate of Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, the movie revisits the infamous 1989 Central Park Jogger case, in which a wealthy white woman who worked in the financial district was brutally raped while running in Central Park, leaving her disfigured and comatose. Five minority teens -- Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Kharey White, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana -- were eventually charged with the crime and convicted, and they served sentences of various lengths. The film details how the boys came into police custody that night -- they had been part of a larger group that were "making mischief" as one talking head says -- and ended up in squad cars when cops swept through that area of the park. When the comatose victim was found a little later, the police assumed one or several people from this group were responsible, and they began to question the minors for hours on end. Eventually, four of them -- tired, scared, and laboring under the false delusion that they would get to go home if they just said what the cops wanted -- confessed on videotape to the vicious assault. Those tapes are shown in the film, and it's stomach-churning to sit through them as they are juxtaposed with footage of those kids now grown up, talking about their experiences that night. Burns and his cohorts would have had a fine film if they tackled just this case, but they quickly give us a thorough setup for both how bad the crime problem was in New York City at that time and how toxic race relations were before, during, and after this nationally covered trial. The movie is not only a first-rate piece of social history, but an alarming warning about how easily the justice system can be perverted and how that perversion can lead to wrongs that can never be undone. Just as disturbing as the coerced confessions -- which each of the alleged perpetrators recanted not long after -- is the case laid out by the filmmakers of how easily the police could and should have apprehended the actual person responsible. We are informed at the end of the movie that the five men are part of an ongoing legal case that was filed against the city in 2003, and what's most frightening is that nearly 25 years after the incident, everyone involved in it -- from the DA to the detectives to even some of the city's newspaper columnists -- continues to stick to the now easily refutable theory that the kids were guilty. The picture ends on this disquieting note. Sure, there is joy in seeing these men free -- and the story of how the truth finally came out is so fascinating it could be a movie all by itself -- but one of the film's final interviews is with an academic who intones that this case reminds us not how the system eventually got it right, but how easily our conception of American justice can be compromised and overtaken by human error, racism, and fear. It's a sobering documentary that captures America's most beloved city at one of its worst moments.

All Movie Guide - Perry Seibert