USA / 2010 / 120mins / Documentary, History / English

Freedom Riders is a two-hour documentary film about the hundreds of civil rights activists who challenged segregation in interstate transport in the American South during the spring and summer of 1961. During the first year of John F. Kennedy’s presidency, more than four hundred Americans participated in a bold and dangerous experiment designed to awaken the conscience of a complacent nation. These self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” challenged the mores of a racially segregated society by performing a disarmingly simple act. Traveling together in small interracial groups, they sat where they pleased on buses and trains and demanded unrestricted access to terminal restaurants and waiting rooms, even in areas of the Deep South where such behavior was forbidden by law and custom. Their efforts were met with extreme violence and brought international attention to the fight against segregation, exploitation and racism known as the Civil Rights Movement. Freedom Riders chronicles the story behind this courageous group of civil rights activists.

Stanley Nelson

Stanley Nelson is co-founder and Executive Director of Firelight Media, which provides technical education and professional support to emerging documentarians; and co-founder of the for-profit documentary production company, Firelight Films. His films Freedom Riders and Wounded Knee, which are part of the landmark series on Native Americans, We Shall Remain, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 and 2009 respectively. Nelson’s oeuvre spans the range of documentary forms. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple viewed in April 2006 at the Tribeca and San Francisco Film Festivals to sold-out audiences and won awards at both festivals. Jonestown was subsequently shortlisted for the Academy Awards and won the International Documentary Association Award for its use of archival footage. Nelson won two Emmy awards for his film Freedom Riders in 2011, including Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming, and Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking as one of the producers. Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities (2018) which chronicled the 150-year history and impact of HBCUs, and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016), the first comprehensive feature-length documentary portrait of that iconic organization, broke audience records for African American viewership on the PBS series Independent Lens, and trended on Twitter for several hours. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution won the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary Film. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the NEH National Humanities Medal presented by President Obama in 2014. In 2015, the American Film Institute made him its Guggenheim Symposium Honoree. He was awarded a 2015 Individual Peabody Award, presented at the 2016 award ceremony. In 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the News & Documentary Emmy Awards. His film, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, the definitive look at the life and career of the iconic Miles Davis, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019. In 2018, Nelson directed a short film which examined the history and impact of racial profiling in public spaces. The Story of Access was screened at a mandatory training for 175,000 Starbucks employees across 8,000 stores, and received over a million views on companion websites.
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