“People were afraid, period. Crime rates were much higher at the time, and there was a sense that the source of the city’s problem were these minority teenagers,” co-director Sarah Burns says of NYC’s cultural climate at the time. Though the five innocent men have since been exonerated — after some served more than a decade in prison — their story has gone largely untold…until now.
Based on Sarah Burns’s book, the movie talks to the falsely accused, former mayor Ed Koch, reporters and legal teams — contextualizing a case that was all but closed as soon as it occurred. The Central Park Five opens tonight at the Sie FilmCenter, 2510 East Colfax Avenue; tickets are $7 to $10 and can be purchased at the box office, at www.denverfilm.org or at 303-595-3456.
Dec. 21-27, 2012