THE LOVING STORY
SUN, 12/3, 2:00pm, 77 min, follows the Legacy Award presentation, SAG HARBOR CINEMA
Director: Nancy Buirski
Producers: Nancy Buirski, Elisabeth Haviland James
Editor: Elisabeth Haviland James
Cinematographers: Rex Miller, Steve Milligan
The Loving Story is an unusual telling of a civil rights story. Though often overlooked among the pantheon of civil rights struggles, Mildred and Richard Lovings’ quest to live together as husband and wife in the state of Virginia was a pivotal one. A white man and a part-black, part-Rappahannock woman were in love and did not understand why their marriage was a criminal offense in the eyes of the state. Their effort to not live in shame or in exile is universal, metaphorically reminding us of oppressed and exiled people everywhere. The Lovings are paired with two young and ambitious lawyers who are driven to pave the way for Civil Rights and social justice through an historic Supreme Court ruling, changing the country's story forever and making anti-miscegenation laws illegal.
The film won numerous awards including in 2013 the George Foster Peabody Award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Programming. The Chicago Sun-Times said of the film, “Documenting many pivotal moments in the case, it adds a dash of something rarely seen in the grand narrative of the American Civil Rights struggle: romance.”
Nancy Buirski wrote, directed and produced many award winning films, among them A Crime on the Bayou and The Rape of Recy Taylor which completed the cycle on racial justice films she began with The Loving Story; By Sidney Lumet and Afternoon of a Faun, both for American Masters; and her last feature documentary, Desperate Souls, Dark City and The Legend of Midnight Cowboy.