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Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard
Rustin
Project Overview
Bayard Rustin's life story is both inspiring and complex.
As his friend Charles Bloomstein has observed, "Bayard was
born black, illegitimate, in modest circumstances, never
had a college degree, confessed membership in the Young
Communist League, was a homosexual, and was willing to take
principled stands on issues, knowing that those stands would
be unpopular. Yet when he died, he was a respected world
figure." Apart from his career as an activist, Rustin the
man was mischievous, gifted with a fine singing voice (he
recorded two albums of spirituals), and a collector with
a knack for finding museum-quality art in New York City
trash. While Brother Outsider will chronicle Rustin's
life, it is intended to be far more than a simple or reverential
biography. Instead, the film will use Rustin's story as
a lens through which to examine the political and social
tensions running through twentieth-century America and particularly
those at the intersections of race, class, sexual orientation
and political activism.
Following Rustin's death in 1987 (at age
75), there has been a dramatic resurgence of interest in
him. Three Rustin biographies have been published since
1997, a number of awards have been created in his memory,
and various organizations are working to continue his legacy.
This curiosity speaks to Rustin's importance in our own
time, and strongly indicates that an audience for the film
already exists. Intended for national broadcast on PBS,
Brother Outsider is being produced in close consultation
with a panel of respected historians.
By introducing Martin Luther King, Jr. to
Gandhi's ideas and protest tactics, Bayard Rustin literally
changed the course of history and yet the general public remains
unaware of his contributions. Our primary goal, then, is
to restore Bayard Rustin to his proper place in history.
In so doing, it is our deeply held belief that BROTHER
OUTSIDER and the story of the man historian John D'Emilio
calls the "lost prophet" of the civil rights movementÑhas
the potential to captivate and educate millions of Americans
in a diverse array of communities.
BIOS OF PROJECT STAFF:
Sam Pollard (Executive Producer) served as co-executive
producer of I'll Make me a World, a six-hour PBS
series on the history of African-American artists in America,
He produced and directed two films in the Eyes on the
Prize II series for Blackside, Inc., one of which received
an Emmy award. Pollard was co-producer and editor of 4
Little Girls, a feature-length HBO documentary directed
by Spike Lee and nominated for an Academy Award in 1998.
Additionally, he has edited a number of feature films directed
by Lee, including Girl 6, Jungle Fever and
Mo' Better Blues.
Nancy D. Kates (Director) is a San
Francisco-based filmmaker and writer. Her award-winning
film Their Own Vietnam, a portrait of American women
who served in the Vietnam War, has been broadcast on PBS
and exhibited at film festivals internationally, including
the Sundance Film Festival. She served as the Associate
Producer for the 1996 Discovery Channel documentary feature
Mysteries of the Last Tsar, and producer for Computer
Chronicles, a national PBS series on technology. She
has also directed the documentaries Castro Cowboy,
Married People, and Joining the Tribe.
Bennett Singer (Producer) worked
for nearly five years at Blackside, Inc., where he served
as an associate producer on Eyes on the Prize II
and as an editor of the series companion volume Voices
of Freedom. Singer also served as a producer for With
God On Our Side, a six-part PBS series on the Religious
Right, and as co-producer for The Question of Equality,
a four-part PBS series on gay rights. He is the editor of
Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian, an award-winning
anthology, and 42 Up, companion volume to the Michael
Apted documentary, and is the co-author of The Student
Body, a novel published by Random House.
Robert Shepard (Cinematographer)
is an award-winning filmmaker and director of photography,
with over 500 production credits in dramatic, documentary,
commercial and sports productions. He shot Black Is...
Black Ain't, the last film by director Marlon Riggs
and winner of the Filmmaker's Trophy at the Sundance Film
Festival, and Licensed to Kill, directed by Arthur
Dong. He also served as a cinematographer for Blackside,
Inc.'s Eyes on the Prize and for the six-part arts
series I'll Make Me a World.
Veronica Selver (Editor) is an award-winning
documentary editor whose credits include the Academy Award-nominated
Berkeley in the Sixties; Blacks and Jews;
and Coming Out Under Fire. She directed and co-produced
KPFA on the Air, broadcast in 2000 on PBS's P.O.V.
series. Selver co-directed You Got To Move, a 1986
film on the legendary Highlander Folk School. and the duPont-Columbia
Award-winning Word Is Out, the first feature documentary
on growing up gay in America.
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