Date: January 14, 2008
Contact: Lindsay Gladstone
Governors State University
Phone: (708) 534-7090
Fax: (708) 534-8399
Email: l-gladstone@govst.edu
For Immediate Release
University Park, IL, January 14, 2008 – “The New Battle,” a half hour documentary by Seth McClellan, concerning Dr. Martin Luther King and the Chicago Freedom Movement will be broadcast on Chicago’s public broadcasting station, WTTW 11, on January 21, at 10:30.
McClellan is a documentary filmmaker and adjunct faculty member at Governors State University. He earned his Master of Fine Arts in Independent Film and Digital Imaging at GSU. His master’s thesis, a 77-minute documentary, "King in Chicago", was recently accepted and will compete in this year's Lake County Film Festival. “The New Battle” was the winner of the Best Short Documentary at the 2007 Iowa Independent Film Festival.
“The New Battle” uses the comments and observations of participants in the Chicago Freedom Movement in the 1960s to describe what happened and illustrate its effects. McClellan weaves the words of Jesse Jackson, C.T. Vivien, Willie Barrow, and others in with photographs taken during the period and additional footage filmed for the documentary.
“The importance of the Chicago Freedom Movement in the history of the Civil Rights Movement is often overlooked,” said McClellan. “The results of Dr. King and others’ work here was not immediately evident. In the south, it was obvious what people were fighting for. In Chicago, it was much more complicated. People were fighting institutional racism to open the Chicago housing market.”
“I was fortunate enough to document both the optimism and pessimism that are the results of the Chicago Freedom Movement,” said McClellan.
More information is available at his website, www.thorncreekproductions.com.
