Premieres Tuesday, Aug.13, 2024 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV / Download the free PBS app
Executive produced by Emmy Award-winning Bostonian Uzo Aduba and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Sam Pollard, and directed by Daphne McWilliams, the feature documentary "A Boston (R)Evolution" examines one of America’s most racially complicated cities as it confronts not only its past but also its future.
When Kim Janey, a black woman who was bused as a child into hostile neighborhoods, is catapulted to the position of acting mayor, she breaks a 200-year history of white men in the city's top seat. Boston's traditional old school politics are further challenged when the top candidates in the historic 2021 mayoral race are four non-white women.
“It is a true honor to be a part of the producing team bringing 'A Boston (R)Evolution' to the screen," said Aduba. “Having grown up in the Greater Boston area, watching the transitional systems and surrounding culture within the city evolve, I understood the importance of this story. That this mayoral race could take shape here, home to the complex ‘Cradle of Liberty,’ in this form is, unto itself, a revolutionary act.”
The film paints a unique portrait of an American city that continues to evolve. It reveals a side of Boston heretofore unseen in mainstream media. This is a tight and fast-paced documentary that asks if America's bedrock city can finally confront its past.
"A Boston (R)Evolution" connects the dots between Boston’s racially complicated past and Kim Janey’s appointment as acting mayor in 2021 to the subsequent historical mayoral election later that year, which resulted in Mayor Michelle Wu’s victory. Using historical footage, expert interviews, and personal narratives, the film contrasts Mel King’s 1983 mayoral campaign with the recent race in which the top candidates are four non-white women, and also considers the impact of the 1970s busing crisis on Boston’s present.
The film kicks off with verité footage of Acting Mayor Janey and her imminent entry into the mayoral race. It’s spine is the active, citywide mayoral campaign, which introduces three other key candidates. Andrea Campbell, a black woman from Roxbury (who is now the attorney general of Massachusetts), speaks of the disparities between her education and that of her brother.
She attended the exalted Boston Latin exam school in the late 1990s and went on to Princeton University and UCLA Law School. Meanwhile Campbell’s brother ended up in Boston’s prison system where he died as a young man.
Annissa Essaibi George, another candidate, is the daughter of immigrants—specifically an Arab man and a Polish woman. Her father warned her that Boston would never elect an Arab to political office. She is now the CEO of the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston.
Finally, viewers meet the ultimate victor, Mayor Michelle Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who moved to Boston from Chicago and then navigated the city’s resources to tend to her mother’s mental health issues. The groundwork for Wu’s success was laid by the recently deceased Mel King, a powerful yet compassionate force in Boston politics whose 1983 campaign for mayor was groundbreaking.
Buffering the rich archival footage are several personal narratives about King: from Acting Mayor Kim Janey who handed out election flyers as a teenager, to an artist/activist who recalls King’s Sunday open-door sessions at his home, to some elderly community members who effusively share their recollections of the “gentle giant.”
Experts offering historical context and personal narratives include: MSNBC host and Boston native Lawrence O’Donnell; Dean's Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Northeastern University Kabria Baumgartner; Director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center David Paleologos; as well as roundtable discussions among UMass Political Science professors and local Boston journalists. Additionally, an assortment of community members reflect on their own experiences in Boston.
Credits: Produced by Fugitive Films, Seventh Child Productions and Black Public Media, with funding provided by the Corporation of Public Broadcasting in association with Meynon Media, Inc. for PBS. Daphne McWilliams is director and producer. Jamie Gordon and Carole Brennan are producers. Uzo Aduba, Sam Pollard and Mikaela Beardsley serve as executive producers. Rob Leshin is editor and co-producer, along with co-producers Hanna Morrill, Dan DeNicola, Courtney Potts, and Anthony Noble. Co-executive producers are Ruth Ann Harnisch, Harriet Lewis.
