The March, also known as The March to Washington, is a documentary by James Blue that captures the preparations and events of that historic day in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. The film was made as part of a series of films created by the United States Information Agency (USIA), founded by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, meant to promote American policies in foreign countries. (James Blue, 1964, 35mm, 33 minutes)

The Bus is a recently restored documentary filmed by Haskell Wexler in 1963 as he traveled cross-country to the March on Washington on a bus with the San Francisco delegation, photographing and conversing candidly with the participants the whole way. (Haskell Wexler, 1965, DCP, 62 minutes). Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding provided by the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Join us after the screening for a discussion with film curator Richard Herskowitz, in person. A past programmer of the Flaherty Film Seminar, Herskowitz is currently completing a book on the work of documentary filmmaker James Blue.

Image caption: Still from Haskell Wexler’s The Bus, courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive