Scene 2 Podcast Seen: Documentary filmmaker Nancy Kates talks about “Brother Outsider,” chronicling the legacy of Bayard Rustin

Hello and welcome to the Scene to Seen Podcast!

I’m Valerie Complex co-editor and film writer at Deadline. In today’s episode, we talk with documentary filmmaker Nancy Kates, director of the PBS documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustinabout the civil rights activist and architect of the 1963 March on Washington.

The documentary chronicles his 60-year career as an activist, organizer and “troublemaker”. Bayard Rustin formulated many of the policies that advanced the American civil rights movement. His passionate belief in Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence made Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders to him in the 1940s and 1950s; His practice of these beliefs attracted the attention of the FBI and police. In 1963, Rustin brought his unique skills to the pinnacle of his civil rights career: his work organizing the March on Washington, the largest protest America had ever seen.

In addition to The Life of Bayard RustinShe also produced and directed the HBO documentary Concerning Susan Sontag, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, where the film received a Special Jury Mention, and in 2014 she was named to the OUT 100, the annual list of fascinating LGBTQ people -American from the magazine. . Since then, the film has screened at more than 130 film festivals in 35 countries and received several awards, including a FOCAL International Award. Mrs. magazine named the film one of the ten best feminist films of 2014, while critics called it “poignant” and “noticing”. Kates also produced and directed Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. The film screened at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and PBS series POVwith which he won more than 25 awards worldwide.

Kates has held residencies at MacDowell, the Blue Mountain Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and elsewhere, and has presented screenwriting workshops at the Athena Film Festival, receiving an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, The Stowe Story was awarded to her. Labs and the Cine Qua Non-Retreat. She recently began work on a film about the late LGBTQ activist and leader Urvashi Vaid.

In today’s episode, I talk to Kates about the journey it took to make this documentary and why, with the release of his own Netflix film about the life of Bayard Rustin, now is the perfect time for an audience to to see who wants to learn more. Brother Outsider.

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