William Kunstler’s Life: From his Daughters’ POV
“Sarah and I wanted to fit dad’s life into a single unified theory,” says Emily Kunstler who co-created the film William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe with her sister Sarah about their notorious lawyer/father. “We wanted all of his clients to be innocent, and all of his cases to be battles for justice and freedom.”
William Kunstler was a radical lawyer and civil rights activist. He represented Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists in the South during the early 1960s, but gained national renown for defending the Chicago Seven (originally Chicago Eight) against charges of conspiring to incite riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
He represented Black Power activists, inmates in the 1971 Attica rebellion, Native American activists charged after the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, Puerto Rican Nationalists, and others. In the 1980s and ’90s, after he represented accused rapists, terrorists, murderers, and members of organized crime, he was dubbed “the most hated lawyer in America.”
“[William Kunstler: Disturbing The Universe] is a film about and for people of courage,” says Emily who also edited the film. “When we decided to make a film about our father, we worried that the people we interviewed would see us only as Kunstler’s daughters. But rather than being an impediment, this inevitable framework became a strength. While we loved our father’s extravagant greatness, we also suffered his frailty. And we knew that many other children, especially those who were young when their parents died, take a similar adult journey toward reconciling the parent with the person.” William died in 1994, when Emily was only 17, and hadn’t yet attended the Tisch School at NYU–which she graduated from with a B.F.A. in 2000.
“Today, with the election of America’s first African American president, it is tempting to relegate the civil rights movement to a bygone chapter in a history book, and to celebrate our victories without acknowledging how much work remains,” says Sarah Kunstler who wrote, co-directed, and co-produced the film. “Still today, racism and bigotry cast ugly shadows on our schools, streets, and courtrooms. Emily and I wanted to bring our father’s story, and the battles he was a part of, out of the past, and to remind audiences that freedom is a constant struggle, and that the people who fight for it are heroes, not because they are without flaws, but because they see injustice and find the courage to act.”
The Kunstler sisters used a Panasonic HDX900 (DVCPro50) for most of their footage, while other portions of the film was shot on an HVX200–either P2 card or minidv tape. But shooting original footage, on a documentary such as theirs, was only part of the story.
“As far as footage, we have a lot of different archival formats,” says Sarah, “VHS, Hi 8, Super 8, 16mm film, Beta SP, Digibeta– it’s a patchwork of different qualities. We had the film color-corrected, and blew up the footage that wasn’t the right aspect ratio, but I wouldn’t say it matches - we embrace the variety as part of the style of our film.”
The film was edited on Final Cut Pro.
The Kunstler’s family film is screening in the Sundance Documentary Competition and was recently purchased by PBS’ P.O.V. series.
