Filmmakers Roger Ross Williams & Elegance Bratton Team Up for Disco Demolition Night Documentary
Variety reports that Hillary Clinton’s HiddenLight Productions has partnered with Roger Ross Williams and “The Inspection” director Elegance Bratton on a feature documentary about 1979’s Disco Demolition Night in Chicago.
Known as one of the darkest days in American music history, the incident saw 50,000 white teenagers descend on Chicago’s Comiskey Park to blow up records made by mostly Black artists.
The doc, which is called “The Night Disco Died,” is a co-production between HiddenLight and One Story Up, and will be presented by Impact Partners and Los Angeles Media Fund (LAMF).
The film will be directed and produced by Bratton, produced by Chester Algernal Gordon (“The Inspection”) and executive produced by Oscar winner and One Story Up’s Williams (“Life Animated”), Geoff Martz, and HiddenLight Productions’ Siobhan Sinnerton, Johnny Webb and Brenda Robinson.
Executive producers include: Andrew Blau, Morgan Earnest, Nina and David Fialkow, Bill and Ruth Ann Harnisch, Melony and Adam Lewis, Jenny Raskin, Luke Rodgers, Jeffrey Soros, Nancy Stephens and Rick Rosenthal, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Patty Quillin and Geralyn White Dreyfous. Co-executive producers include Kanani Datan, John and Lauren Driscoll, Lauren Haber, Kelsey Koenig, Okey Onyiuke and Wendy vanden Heuvel.
Bratton and Algernal Gordon, the filmmaking duo who co-run the production company Freedom Principle, are behind the critically-acclaimed film “The Inspection,” which received nominations for the Golden Globes, Gotham, and Film Independent Spirit Awards, and wins including from the NAACP Image Awards and GLAAD Media Awards and stars Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union.