This looks like another fine documentary from Dogwoof, and superbly timely, as MLK/FBI promises to be an explosive exposé of the FBI’s covert surveillance and persecution of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in the 1950s and 60s. Directed by Sam Pollard, the film is crafted from restored footage of the time, overlaid with narration of declassified materials that’s released on 15 January 2021.

MLK/FBI is a document of institutional racism and harassment of Civil Rights activists; an urgent discussion that holds relevance and importance today. Pollard uses newly discovered and declassified files, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and unsealed by the National Archives, to illustrate the depth and breadth of the FBI’s targeted and sustained harassment of Dr. King at the behest of their director J. Edgar Hoover. Throughout most of the 50’s and 60’s, “no holds were barred”; FBI agents bugged hotel rooms, tapped phones, paid informants, enlisted journalists to write hostile stories about Dr. King, never alerted him to threats on his life, and when King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the FBI threatened to blackmail him unless he committed suicide.

MLK/FBI poses essential questions about freedom, civil disobedience, and patriotism; and who is the gatekeeper of the “American dream”, who gets to decide? Questions that are still being asked today. 

MLK/FBI is set for a 15 January 2021 release: https://dogwoof.com/mlkfbi

MLK FBI