The Central Park Five Documentary (Full PBS Video)

Watch The Central Park Five on PBS. See more from Central Park Five.

(Via NPR)

  Ken Burns has said that no matter what subjects he tackles in his documentaries — baseball or jazz, Mark Twain or the Civil War — they always seem to boil down to two things: "race and place." That's certainly true with his latest film, The Central Park Five, which tells of the violent assault and rape of a female jogger in 1989. 

The place was New York City — and because of citywide racial tensions at the time, the story was seized upon by New York tabloids and national TV newscasts alike. The victim was white — and the five teenagers accused of brutalizing her were black and Latino. It made for frenzied, heated news coverage — and, as the late Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, explains in the film, both race and place were key factors in the attention this case received. 

 The Central Park Five is written, produced and directed by Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns and David McMahon. McMahon served as a producer on other Burns documentaries — Baseball, The War and The National Parks — but this is the first film credit for Sarah Burns. She did, however, write the 2011 nonfiction book on which this film is based, so she's more than earned her way into the family business. 

 ...Four of the five exonerated teens appear and are interviewed on camera. The fifth, Antron McCray, chose to participate only in voiceover. New York City prosecutors and police chose not to appear, or participate, at all. However, the city did try to demand, unsuccessfully, that the filmmakers release outtakes of their interviews, as possible evidence in the ongoing civil trial brought by the former defendants.  Read more

Listen to the NPR story http://www.npr.org/2013/04/16/176686575/central-park-five-rape-race-and-blame-explored