The Children’s March is a movie on an event that occurred way back in 1963 in Alabama, United States of America. Although the movie is not a real recording of the actual events that happened during that time, the core movie line presents a case scenario of real events that actually happened by use of real people. The latter witnessed events in the movie. Directed and produced by Bobby Houston and Robert Hudson, this movie was released before the close of 2004. It experienced a positive reception both in the box office and the general public.
A year later after its release, it was nominated for an Academy Award and won on the documentary category with massive support. This indicated that the movie received less negative criticism from the public. Indeed, this was a vivid indication of its suitability to the entire target audience.
On the morning of 2nd May 1963, the streets of Birmingham in Alabama witnessed a youthful revolutionary uprising of l children against local civil authorities. The children, fueled by rage and anger, stormed into town streets. The uprising was against conspicuous segregation that had been prevalent for years in the state. The civil authorities had been accused of open segregation leading to social inequity.
These children were filled with a lot of courage and could not be intimidated by the reaction of the authorities. Armed with fire horses and packs of dogs, the police made serious anti-riot attempts in trying to stop the children from taking part in the demonstration.
But in inexplicable ways, the children prevailed and proved to be anti-police racial-intimidation that had laid deep roots in the state against the community of the black people.
This stunned even their parents in view of the fact that past attempts to make such demonstrations by adults had seriously failed. The children marched on and on and caused a stir to the authorities and the nation at large in the realization of the racial- plague that had rocked Alabama State for years. Local and national authorities had to make immediate reaction to the situation which led to the end of racial segregation against the blacks in the state.
Forty years later, this brave story is told in form of a movie by Teaching Tolerance in collaboration with Tell the Truth Pictures, and the public reaction towards it proves extremely positive, judging from the award it won. This movie is uniquely a short documentary that runs for approximately forty minutes and is available in CD and DVD versions. It features various actors and other casts who facilitate the story.
Screen casts include Dominique Alexis who stars as the major interviewed protestor, Rico Anderson plays the role of D.J Shelly, the ‘playboy’ of the movie. As evident in the movie, there is a police interrogator and this role is played by Josh Evans, Tony Otto plays the role of Birmingham chief police officer at that time. The role of the jail interrogator reenacting is mainly played by Mr. Sharp. Other casts include Hawk, who is mainly the protestor appearing on the news and the townsperson played by Jessica Joy.
Besides the screen cast, there are background casts who help make the documentary and these include Geoffrey George who plays a major role in cinematography to make the story appear real while Don Davis plays a crucial role in the playing original music as the soundtracks of the movie. This film was initially short but then edited by mark Brewer in conjunction with Sean Keenan. Artistic features in the movies are made by Chris Moir while Erika McCauley is responsible for the make of the casts and their hair styles.
Anthony Ellison plays a crucial role in the production management while special graphics and motion graphics are done by Steve Ellington. Although this movie was meant to appear natural with no graphic of other effects, there are visual effects that have been applied in the movie in order to make it depict the real situation that happed forty years after its production and these visual effects are made by Robert Grabendike.
The costumes and the casts’ attires including their wardrobes are carefully chosen and selected by Jaclyn Tamitazo who played a role of the costume assistant. These are the special casts although there are numerous other casts that can not be listed here. It won an academy award in the Short Documentary category in 2005.
From my personal perspective, I feel that the movie is very inspiring to the viewership. Unlike other movies that may take long time to follow and understand, The Children’s Match is quite interesting to watch. It is also thought-provoking and is quite suitable to varied audience ranging from children to adults.
Furthermore, it contains information from primary sources that include the people who are interviewed in the movie and this makes it more factual and thus connecting to the past and proves to be a tale of a true story. I suppose the movie is quite memorable to the target audience bearing in mind that it is action-packed with lots of lessons to learn.