About this episode
For years Martin Luther King Jr, the leader and hero of the civil rights movement, faced constant surveillance and harassment by the US government. Helping us to learn more about this dark chapter in America's history is award-winning director, editor and producer, Sam Pollard, whose latest film MLK/FBI premieres on January 15th 2021, ahead of Martin Luther King Jr Day on January 18th. As a filmmaker with a career spanning more than three decades, Sam Pollard has won three Emmys and along with Spike Lee received an Oscar nomination for Four Little Girls (1997) . He is a teacher at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, and a member at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. MLK/FBI is not a biopic. It is a complex and nuanced story with a clear protagonist, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and the antagonist, J Edgar Hoover, who served as the Director of the FBI for almost four decades. Each man had his fatal flaws and each man had his own view of what America should be. "I’m someone who would do a survey film about anything and anybody. I want to be able to dig in as an anthropologist and archaeologist, to look at the pros and cons, and nuances of human beings and different institutions." – Sam Pollard