In 1966, young Black fisherman Gary Duncan tries to break up a fight between white and Black teenagers outside a newly integrated school in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. During the confrontation, he touches one of the white teens on the arm. That night, police arrest 19-year-old Duncan for assault on a minor. In Washington, DC, a young Jewish attorney named Richard Sobol leaves a prestigious law firm to offer his legal services in New Orleans as a volunteer for the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee. With Sobol's help, Duncan confronts a racist Louisiana legal system—manipulated by segregationist and de facto Parish boss Leander Perez—to challenge his unfair arrest.
Biography:
Nancy Buirski worked as a photographer and picture editor in the international department of The New York Times. Her book Earth Angels: Migrant Children in America, was published by Pomegranate Press. Buirski founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in collaboration with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and directed it for ten years. In addition to her documentaries, she has produced several collections of Full Frame shorts and a collection of feature-length documentaries. The Katrina Experience brings together a collection of films about Hurricane Katrina, while Time Piece is a cross-cultural collection of Turkish and American shorts. She also produced Althea, a film about the Black tennis player, Althea Gibson.
