Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

6.9 / Rating 21 votes 1963

During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1999.

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Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment is a 1963 direct cinema documentary film directed by Robert Drew. The film centers on the University of Alabama's "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" integration crisis of June 1963. Drew and the other filmmakers, including D. A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock, were given expanded access to key areas, including United States President John F. Kennedy's Oval Office and the homes of United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Governor George Wallace of Alabama. The film first aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as an installment of Close-Up! four months after the incident, on October 28, 1963. It was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress on December 28, 2011.

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