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.
Bratton was recently named one of PvNew’s 10 Directors to Watch for 2023. In 2021, Bratton’s nonfiction feature debut “Pier Kids” won an Independent Spirit Award. Following that, he wrote and directed the critically-acclaimed semi-autobiographical narrative and his feature film “The Inspection,” which had its premiere in 2022 and was the Closing Night film at the New York Film Festival. He is currently working on “Hell Fighter,” a documentary about jazz pioneer and music mogul James Reese Europe.
Algernal Gordon has produced acclaimed short films and documentary films including Bratton’s “Pier Kids.” Additionally, they became the first gender non-binary African-American costume designer to compete in competition at the Cannes Film Festival with “Port Authority.”
Roger Ross Williams is an Oscar, Emmy, NAACP Image award, Webby and Peabody award-winning director, producer and writer – and the first African American director to win an Academy Award with his film “Music By Prudence.” Williams directed “Life, Animated,” for which he won the Sundance director’s prize. Williams’ first scripted feature “Cassandro” for Prime Video premiered at Sundance in January.
Siobhan Sinnerton, creative director and senior VP of unscripted at HiddenLight, said: “HiddenLight’s ambition is to spotlight untold stories and to make films that entertain, engage and share voices and perspectives from around the world. ‘The Night Disco Died’ sits perfectly within this remit. To be working with Roger Ross Williams, who has an enormous amount of experience in telling stories that have played a huge part in American culture, is a great privilege.
“From the moment we met Elegance we could tell that his passion and vision for this story were going to make it something very special. We hope it is the first of many brilliant collaborations HiddenLight has with he and Chester.”
Williams added: “We are very excited to be collaborating with HiddenLight and, on a personal level, I am thrilled to be working alongside Elegance — such a brilliant filmmaker — to bring this history of music to the surface again. The importance of highlighting such historically silenced voices cannot be understated, and I look forward to bringing this to audiences everywhere along with our great friends at HiddenLight and Impact Partners.”
Bratton said: “I am so honored to be given this opportunity to shine a light on the story of a dark time in music’s history that is not often told. It’s been a true gift to work beside my producing partner Chester Algernal Gordon, as well as to collaborate with Roger whose work I have admired for a long time.“
