http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/129640601
May 08, 2009
By Bill Everhart, The Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Mass
William Kunstler, the legendary civil rights lawyer associated with
so many prominent causes and incidents in the turbulent 1970s and
1980s, was loved by many and hated by many as well.
His daughters, Emily and Sarah, loved their father but feared many of
his clients. They have made a film about their dad and his remarkable
career that, in the words of Emily, "helped us reconcile ourselves
with what he was doing when we were growing up."
That film, "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe," will open the
Berkshire International Film Festival Thursday at 8 p.m. at the
Mahai-we Performing Arts Center. A hit at the Sundance Film Festival,
it will be released in theaters later this year.
Through a mix of contemporary interviews and vintage film clips,
"Disturbing the Universe" brings viewers back to such iconic events
as the trial of the "Chicago 7," the Attica prison riot, the standoff
at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, and the Central Park jogger trial, all
of which found Kunstler siding with those in the crosshairs of
authority, judicial, governmental or military. These events are seen
through the perspective of Kunstler's filmmaker daughters, who missed
his heroic civil rights battles but lived through other battles
colored by shades of gray.
"We're in our 30s, and we had to be this old, no younger, or older,
to look back," says Sarah, accompanied by Emily in a joint telephone
interview. "We had reached the point for us to do this so we could move on."
Kunstler was 57 when Sarah was born and 59 when Emily came along,
both to second wife Margaret Ratner Kunstler, a young civil rights
lawyer when she met her future husband. Growing up, they saw him
defending Mafia don John Gotti, the black men accused of raping and
beating a woman jogger, the Palestinian who assassinated the
controversial Rabbi Kahane. Protesters were
chanting angrily in front of their home as they returned from school,
hate mail arrived regularly. "Some of dad's clients gave us
nightmares," recalls Emily, the film's narrator.
The sisters' reconciliation process began with revisiting the first
triumphs of their father, who died in 1995 at the age of 76. Emily, a
film school graduate, and Sarah, who went to law school, had been
making advocacy films for prisoners for 10 years, following in their
father's footsteps in their civil rights advocacy. (The film opens
with the young girls interviewing their father in a mock TV show.)
They were primed for a documentary on their dad, a remarkably
objective one that doesn't gloss over their father's love of the
spotlight or the naivety that sometimes clouded his realism.
Interviews with Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, activist Tom Hayden
and talk show host Phil Donohue, bring to life the Chicago 7 trial
after the chaotic Democratic convention of 1968 that fully
radicalized Kunstler and is "the moment we are most proud of," says Emily.
Mike Smith, a prison guard wounded at Attica, recalls the massacre
there when troops moved in to break up the hostage crisis, and Indian
leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks talk about the potential
massacre Kunstler helped avert at Wounded Knee.
"What he had done before we came along was part of the mythology we
had grown up with," says Sarah. "Doing the film made him more real,
made him more human than superhuman. Of course, he was always the
hero of his own stories, but we learned that there were so many other heroes."
Part of the motivation for the documentary, said Emily in the
interview, was a desire "to start an archive project of those great
civil rights stories." The Central Park jogger case of 1989, which so
upset the young girls when their father took up the unpopular defense
of the accused amid a lynch-mob hysteria, turned into a civil rights
story, one that eventually led to the release of the falsely accused
Yusef Salaam after 61/2 years in prison. (Salaam and Smith are among
those interviewed in the film who will join the Kunstler sisters and
their mother at the Berkshire International Film Festival.)
"When my father said that everyone is racist," explained Emily in
reference to a recurrent theme in the documentary, "he meant that we
all have to accept personal responsibility for racism to bring about
change. He meant that we are all accountable."
"Since Obama's election I have heard a lot more prejudice in people's
words than I did before," says Sarah. "I am grateful to hear it. It
can't be changed if we don't expose it."
If William Kunstler were alive today, Sarah believes he would be
reminding people of the racism that exists even after the election of
an African-American president. Emily suggests he would have taken up
the cause of accused terrorists at Guantanamo, and would still be
seeking the release from prison of American Indian Movement leader
Leonard Peltier.
"William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" will be released later
this year by Arthouse films and will run on PBS in 2010. This fall,
the sisters plan to use the film as part of an education and outreach
program to encourage young people in high school and college to get
involved in community programs and organizations that combat
injustice and help the disadvantaged.
"Our father was a regular person," says Sarah. "He and a lot of
regular people who are seen in our film stood up for what was right.
You don't have to be a special person to have the courage necessary
to fight for change."
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