'The Loving Story': Tribeca celebrates a landmark Supreme Court victory

By Kevin Lally

The Tribeca Film Festival, founded by Robert De Niro and his producing partner Jane Rosenthal to revitalize Lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks, is now ten years old, and it's evolved into a welcome and vibrant New York spring institution. With former Sundance honcho Geoffrey Gilmore now serving as chief creative officer for Tribeca Enterprises and Nancy Schafer as the event's executive director, the festival has become more selective but also a showcase for new talent: Of the104 directors represented withfeatures in this year's program, a remarkable 60 are first-timers.

Veteran FJI critic and correspondent Doris Toumarkine will be filing an overview of the festival on this website later on. But we can share that she's pretty enthusiastic about this year's lineup, and here are some of the films she's seen and recommends: Michael Cuesta's Roadie, with Ron Eldard and Bobby Cannavale; the Italian crime drama A Quiet Life, starring the great Toni Servillo; the foodie documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi; the French comedy Romantics Anonymous; the rock 'n' roll drama Janie Jones with Alessandro Nivola and Abigail Breslin; the Yugoslavian documentary Cinema Komunisto, about Tito'smovie obsessions; Renee, about transgendered tennis star Renee Richards; and the searing documentary Gone, about a retired New York police officer's search for her missing son.

Yesterday was a good documentary day for this correspondent too. It started with a screening of the opening-night film, The Union, Cameron Crowe's intimate look at themaking of the album of the same name--Elton John's collaboration with his longtime idol, veteran session keyboardist and singer-songwriter Leon Russell. The affection John has for the white-bearded rock legend is immense, and there's an especially wonderful moment when Russell plays him a new song called "In the Hands of Angels"--inspired by John's nurturing of Russell's comeback--and the younger superstar retreats to a private space to shed some tears. During the recording, Russell underwent brain surgery, and it's heartwarming to see how participating in this musical project re-energizes the frail veteran and speeds his recovery.

Inspirational on an entirely different level, the documentary The Loving Story tells the saga of Mildred and Richard Loving, the Virginia couple at the center of the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling that finally struck down this nation's grotesque anti-miscegenation laws, then in effect in 21 states. Richard was white, Mildred was black and Native American, and they lived in a community where the races freely intermingled, but risked arrest if they dared to marry.

Director Nancy Buirski had the huge luck to discover a trove of black-and-white footage of the Loving family filmed by Hope Ryden (who attended the screening), footage that remained unseen in storage for more than 40 years. The scenes of the Lovings and their children at home are intimate and disarming. Richard is a man of few words and Mildred is charmingly soft-spoken, but the looks they exchange are clearly those of a couple in love and determined to remain together no mattter what.

The film also features footage both old and new of the Lovings' attorneys, Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, who were then young and relatively inexperienced but smart and savvy enough to bring the couple's case all the way to the Supreme Court and win a unanimous verdict. (Hirschkop was also at the screening and received a standing ovation.) The patently racist statements of the state judge in Virginia certainly helped their case against the law, which they argued was a century-old vestige of slavery.

Tragically, Richard Loving died eight years afterhis Supreme Court victory when a drunk driver crashed into the couple's car. Mildred died in 2008; seeing her obituary, filmmaker Buirski was amazed to discover there had never been an in-depth documentary about this historic couple and their legal fight. Produced by HBO Documentary Films,The Loving Storywill air on HBO in February 2012 and it surely deserves some theatrical exposure too--particularly for its parallels to the current battles over same-sex marriage (which Mildred publicly endorsed in 2007).After all, in the annals of civil-rights milestones, Loving vs. Virginia deserves to be as well-known as Brown vs. Board of Education.

(Loving Story photo by Grey Villet)