THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE Special Screenings

Ken Burns joins daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon to tell a story based on Sarah Burns’ book, “The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding.” They take us back to a night in 1989 when five young black and Latino teenagers were arrested in New York City’s Central Park under suspicion of committing random assaults in the park. Later that same night, a young white female jogger who had been brutally attacked and raped was found in the park, and the immediate public outcry sparked by her discovery changed the fate of those five young men forever as they became victims of a city-wide frenzy and extreme police action. The accused men can never recapture their teenage years spent behind bars, but by telling their stories the filmmakers remind us that they will not be forgotten. This moving documentary about a miscarriage of justice remains, sadly, as relevant today as it was in 1989.