Above: Bill Siegel and Khalilah Camacho-Ali
Unlike other films about the controversial boxer, the recent documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali makes no pretense of telling Ali’s whole story. It presumes that most of us in the audience already know it and those of us who don’t can easily fill in the gaps with the wealth of other movies, books, and TV specials devoted to his legend. Produced by Chicago-based documentary company Kartemquin Films, Trials focuses on Ali’s conversion to the Nation of Islam and the controversies associated with his religious and political convictions. These subjects are addressed in Michael Mann’s Ali (2001) and referenced in other documentaries about him, but Trials examines them in greater depth, generally neglecting his athletic achievements to better focus on his radicalism.
We took some time to speak with the film’s director, Bill Siegel, whose first film was Kartemquin-produced The Weather Underground...
Unlike other films about the controversial boxer, the recent documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali makes no pretense of telling Ali’s whole story. It presumes that most of us in the audience already know it and those of us who don’t can easily fill in the gaps with the wealth of other movies, books, and TV specials devoted to his legend. Produced by Chicago-based documentary company Kartemquin Films, Trials focuses on Ali’s conversion to the Nation of Islam and the controversies associated with his religious and political convictions. These subjects are addressed in Michael Mann’s Ali (2001) and referenced in other documentaries about him, but Trials examines them in greater depth, generally neglecting his athletic achievements to better focus on his radicalism.
We took some time to speak with the film’s director, Bill Siegel, whose first film was Kartemquin-produced The Weather Underground...
- 12/17/2013
- by Ben and Kathleen Sachs
- MUBI
Pound For Pound: Siegel’s Critical Bio-bit Middleweight
Pop culture commentator Chuck Klosterman recently reminded in his study of cultural villains, I Wear The Black Hat, that although Muhammad Ali may have been and might always be remembered as the greatest boxer the world has ever known, most people tend to overlook the fact that in the sixties he endlessly stirred controversy with his consciously outspoken, radically controversial beliefs on race and religion. Though he was an immensely influential icon himself, Ali, was in fact under heavy influence from the Nation of Islam, a group who, domestically at the time, was considered little more than a cultist collective whose main cultural concern was to uphold segregation in the midst of the civil rights movement, maintaining racial purity – an appalling agenda looking back. Under their advisement, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, who ultimately became their biggest mouthpiece to the world. Almost in sync,...
Pop culture commentator Chuck Klosterman recently reminded in his study of cultural villains, I Wear The Black Hat, that although Muhammad Ali may have been and might always be remembered as the greatest boxer the world has ever known, most people tend to overlook the fact that in the sixties he endlessly stirred controversy with his consciously outspoken, radically controversial beliefs on race and religion. Though he was an immensely influential icon himself, Ali, was in fact under heavy influence from the Nation of Islam, a group who, domestically at the time, was considered little more than a cultist collective whose main cultural concern was to uphold segregation in the midst of the civil rights movement, maintaining racial purity – an appalling agenda looking back. Under their advisement, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, who ultimately became their biggest mouthpiece to the world. Almost in sync,...
- 8/23/2013
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
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