TWO TOWNS OF JASPER IN THE NEWS
Marco Williams (L) and Whitney Dow (C) on the Oprah Winfrey Show, January 2003.
"Once in a while, there's a documentary that comes along that really strikes a chord... Two Towns of Jasper is raw, it is provocative and controversial... Marco Williams and Whitney Dow knew that there was a story to be uncovered in Jasper, not just about the town, but about America, and ultimately, each one of us... Their film is a raw and uncensored look at racism in our country of America." - Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show 1/21/03
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"The result is an unusual level of candor in the always-touchy discussion about race." - Sharon Waxman, THE WASHINGTON POST
"...its honest picture of the complexity of race relations and perceptions is compelling." - Kenneth Turan, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
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"One of the most insightful, illuminating, and unsettling pics ever made about race relations in the U.S." - Joe Leydon, VARIETY
"This is a strong year for documentaries... and one of the best is the haunting Two Towns of Jasper." - Elvis Mitchell, THE NEW YORK TIMES
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"On the surface, Two Towns of Jasper is an investigation into one small town's response to a modern day lynching, but at the core, the systematic nature of racism, the fleeting interaction between two seemingly separate worlds, is explored." - Kathy A. McDonald, INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY
Interview with Marco Williams and Whitney Dow, recipients of the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award, 2002 - DOCUMENT
"Truth told in black and white" - Tom Cardy, THE DOMINION POST
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"Two Towns of Jasper... treads a difficult line between being compelling viewing and offering a complex view without easy answers." - Paul Power, THE INDEPENDENT
"'Two Towns of Jasper' illustrates how far we need to travel before basic decency and humanity take hold... it is a strong film with a clear point of view." - Kirk Honeycutt, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
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"'This documentary is one of the best things I've seen done... it's something we believe every American ought to see.'" - Elizabeth Jensen, quoting Tom Bettag, LA TIMES
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"Split Vision: 'Race Trumped Everything,' even for filmmakers trying to grasp the aftermath of a Texas crime." - Suzanne C. Ryan, BOSTON GLOBE
"The concept was surprisingly simple: A white and a black filmmaker go to a divided town and interview members of their own racial communities after a modern-day lynching. The resulting documentary - Two Towns of Jasper, airing on PBS's P.O.V. series on Jan. 22 - is compelling, not because its underlying subject is new, sadly, but because its viewpoint is." - Kim Campbell, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
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"It was Williams and Dow's goal to present a snapshot of how citizens felt and reacted as the nation's attention was centered on the modern-day equivalent of a lynching, and hopefully show there was more to Jasper than racist whites and angry blacks." - Allan Johnson, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"Two Towns of Jasper, a documentary filmed in the Texas town where in 1998 a black man was chained behind a pickup truck and dragged to his death, presents a new and better way of looking at race on-screen." - David Zurawick, BALTIMORE SUN
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"Dual visions of an ugly crime, 'Two Towns of Jasper' on PBS probes black man's dragging death" - Mike McDaniel, THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
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TWO TOWNS OF JASPER ON NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
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