You Got To Move: Stories of Change in the South

Produced by Lucy Massie Phenix Directed and edited by Lucy Massie Phenix & Veronica Selver. With Myles Horton, Bernice Robinson, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Bill Saunders, Rebecca Simpson, Gail & Richard Story, May Justice, MaryLee & Russell Rogers, Becky Simpson, members of the Bumpass Cove community and the Cranks Creek Survival Center of Kentucky.

Lucy Massie Phenix's remarkable documentary You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South celebrates individuals and communities who dared to change the world for the better. Inspired by the filmmaker’s experiences at Tennessee’s world-renowned Highlander Research and Education Center, the film captures the enthusiastic spirit of a place that has helped people unite at the grassroots level. Highlander “grads” have long been active in some of the most significant movements for justice — leading the fights for Civil and Labor rights and working to protect communities from the ravages of strip mining and toxic waste dumping. Rich in the language and music of the South, You Got to Move tells their stories — chronicling how “ordinary” people discovered the courage and ability to confront reality, and change it. It is a film that champions civil action and makes you want to move!

The DVD release commemorates the upcoming 80th anniversary of Highlander, whose attendees included Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and was the source of the song “We Shall Overcome.” The premiere also memorializes the 50th anniversary of the Albany Movement — a landmark in the history of American civil rights activism — which was led by students, including Bernice Johnson Reagon (founder of the a cappella group Sweet Honey In the Rock and a nationwide leader for human rights) who appears in the film. To create this deluxe DVD, Milliarium Zero (sister company to Milestone Films) created a stunning high-def scan from of the director’s original internegative and then added a plethora of bonus features.

Bonus Features

1) New High-def master off the original internegative

2) Bill Moyers’ Journal: Adventures of a Radical Hillbilly: Myles Horton, (1981, excerpt)

3) The Cutting Room Floor: Interview with E.D. Nixon, Architect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

4) Highlander’s 75th Anniversary Celebration, 2007, short film

5) Lucy Massie Phenix comments on the making of the film

6) The people in the film revisited

7) Interview with Bill Saunders (2010)

8) Spanish subtitles (Optional)

Reviews

“From Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. to Paul Wellstone and so many more who followed them, the Highlander Center has been an inspiration for the continuing struggle for social justice in America. Lucy Phenix has splendidly caught the spirit and moral power of an historic place where democracy still lives.” – Bill Moyers