Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power
Directed by Sam Pollard & Geeta Gandbhir
The passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented not the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of a new, crucial chapter. Nowhere was this next battle better epitomized than in Lowndes County, Alabama, a rural, impoverished town with a vicious history of racist terrorism.
In a town that was eighty percent Black but had zero Black voters, laws were just paper without power. This isn’t a story of hope but of action. Through first-person accounts and searing archival footage, LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER tells the story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Lowndes County.
A Peacock Original,
Participant Presents,
A Multitude Films Production,
In Association with The Atlantic.
2022 / 90 MINS
WINNER OF THE NEWS & DOCUMENTARY EMMY AWARD FOR OUSTANDING RESEARCH: DOCUMENTARY
About
the Team
Geeta Gandbhir — Director
Geeta embarked on her career in narrative film under the guidance of Spike Lee and Sam Pollard. As a Director, credits include the series "Born in Synanon" for Paramount, "Eyes on the Prize" for HBO, "Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power," which was nominated for the 2022 Critics Choice Award, won a 2023 SIMA Award, and is nominated for two 2023 Emmys. She directed and show ran the series "Black and Missing" for HBO which won a 2022 NAACP Award for Best Directing, a 2022 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Series, a 2022 ATAS Honors Award, and a Cinema Eye Honors for Best Series. She directed the film "Apart," with Rudy Valdez, for HBOMax, which was nominated for an NAACP Award and won a 2022 Emmy Award. Her short film from 2020, "Call Center Blues," with Topic Studios was shortlisted for the 2021 Academy Awards. She directed an episode "The Asian Americans" for PBS, which won the 2021 Peabody Award. Additional directing credits include the six-part series "Why We Hate" for Discovery, and "I Am Evidence" for HBO which won a 2019 Emmy, DuPont Award, and ATAS Award. Her film "Armed with Faith" for PBS also won a 2019 News and Documentary Emmy, an episode of the Netflix series "The Rapture," focusing on rap artist Rapsody, "Prison Dogs," which she co-directed with Perri Peltz, and "A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers," for PBS. She also played a co-director and co-producer role in the "A Conversation on Race" series in collaboration with The New York Times Op-Docs. This series earned recognition, including an Online Journalism Award for Online Commentary, an AFI Documentary Film Festival Audience Award for Best Short, and a MacArthur Grant. She also co-produced the HBO film "The Sentence," directed by Rudy Valdez, which received a 2019 Primetime Emmy.
Sam Pollard — Director
Sam is an accomplished feature film and television video editor, and documentary producer/director. Between 1990 and 2010, Mr. Pollard edited a number of Spike Lee's films: MO’ BETTER BLUES, JUNGLE FEVER, GIRL 6, CLOCKERS, and BAMBOOZLED. Mr. Pollard and Mr. Lee co-produced a number of documentary productions for the small and big screen: FOUR LITTLE GIRLS, a feature-length documentary about the 1963 Birmingham church bombings which was nominated for an Academy Award and WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE, a four-part documentary that won numerous awards, including a Peabody and three Emmy Awards. Five years later 2010 he co-produced and supervised the edit on the follow-up to LEVEES, IF GOD IS WILLING AND DA CREEK DON’T RISE.
Since 2012 Mr. Pollard has completed as a producer/director SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME, a 90-minute documentary for PBS that was in competition at the Sundance Festival; AUGUST WILSON: THE GROUND ON WHICH I STAND, a 90-minute documentary in 2015 for American Masters; TWO TRAINS RUNNIN’, a feature-length documentary in 2016 that premiered at the Full Frame Film Festival. SAMMY DAVIS JR., I’VE GOTTA BE ME for American Masters premièred at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. In 2019 Mr. Pollard co-directed the Six Part Series WHY WE HATE that premiered on The Discovery Channel. In 2020 he was one of the directors on the 2020 HBO Series ATLANTA’S MISSING AND MURDERED: THE LOST CHILDREN. Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children. He also completed in 2020 MLK/FBI which premiered at the 2020 Toronto Film Festival and New York Film Festival.
Viridiana Lieberman — Editor
Viridiana is a filmmaker and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She edited the feature documentary I AM EVIDENCE (Tribeca 2017, HBO), which won a 2019 News & Doc Emmy for Best Documentary and the short documentary LOVE THE SINNER (Tribeca 2017). She also co-directed FATTITUDE, a feature documentary that exposes how popular culture fosters fat prejudice and then offers an alternative way of thinking. She edited SPECIAL OLYMPICS: 50 YEARS OF CHANGING THE GAME which aired in 2018 on ABC and ESPN and THE SENTENCE (HBO), which won the 2018 Sundance Film Festival US Documentary Audience Award and the 2019 Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. In 2019, she edited STONEWALL: THE MAKING OF A MONUMENT for New York Times Op-Docs.
Dema Paxton Fofang — Producer
Dema is a writer and producer based in Los Angeles. Dema has developed and produced projects with filmmakers Geeta Gandbhir, Sam Pollard, Maisie Crow and Erin Lee Carr. Dema’s directorial debut narrative short film, THE SWIM INSTRUCTOR, screened as an official selection of the 2015 Austin Film Festival and Portland Film Festival. Previously Dema developed TV series for Viceland, collaborating with Spike Jonze on their original programming slate, and documentaries for Anonymous Content, working with the New York Times and Atlantic Magazine. As a screenwriter, Dema is represented by Jacob Perlin at Iconoclast and Nina Soriano at Anonymous Content.
Henry Adebonojo — Director of Photography
Henry is a New York City-based cinematographer and photographer with a twenty-five-year background in creating images and films. His work spans a variety of genres and pursuits—documentary films, promos and commercials, music videos, and various other television projects. These include the Academy Award-nominated documentary I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, Emmy-nominated HALF PAST AUTUMN, BLACK ART: IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT for HBO, HABLA for HBO Latino, MARIAN ANDERSON: SHE’S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HER HAND on PBS, and more.
Kathryn Bostic — Composer
Kathryn is an Emmy-nominated and award-winning composer and artist known for her work on films, TV, and theater. She is a recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including the Sundance Institute | Time Warner Foundation Fellows, Sundance Institute Film Music Program, Sundance Documentary Film Scoring Lab at Skywalker Sound, BMI Lionel Newman Conducting Fellowship, and Best Music in Film by the African American Film Critics Association. In 2016, she became the first African American female score composer to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Bostic's scores and songs can be heard in productions with a lineup of award-winning directors and writers; she is Emmy-nominated and Oscar-shortlisted for her original music in AMY TAN: UNINTENDED MEMOIR and TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM, respectively. She is currently the first Artist in Residence for the Chicago Sinfonietta. As a solo artist, Bostic toured extensively in festivals and venues worldwide. She has also recorded and performed with many artists including Nas, Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne.
Archival Producer
Lizzy McGlynn
Consulting Producer
Vann R. Newkirk II
Co-Producer
Viridiana Lieberman
Associate Producers
Wesley Harris
Producers
Anya Rous
Jess Devaney
Dema Paxton Fofang
Writer
Dema Paxton Fofang
Coordinating Producer
Colleen Cassingham
Jot Sahi
Executive Producers
Jeff Skoll
Diane Weyermann
Fred Grinstein
Linzee Troubh
