Via Zoom Flashback: Director Sam Pollard of ‘The League’

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CHICAGO – Sam Pollard has established himself as a top director of documentaries, to add to his stellar career as a film editor … including for Spike Lee. His latest doc is a deep dive into the 20th Century curiosity of the Negro League. With interviews, archival photos/footage and comprehensive storytelling, the doc is entitled “The League.”

The Negro Leagues were born because of Major League Baseball’s segregation in the first half of the 20th Century, as the owners colluded to keep blacks off their teams. It took black entrepreneur Rube Foster to organize the rag-tag “negro” teams of the era into a collective in 1920. At the League’s peak they forged their own top players, introduced a more modern speed-oriented game and produced many future stars … including Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. Barely surviving the Depression, the barnstorming league changed teams and areas of the country with impunity, and after Jackie Robinson broke the so-called “color line,” the slow demise of The League culminated with its last All-Star game in 1962.

Director Sam Pollard of ‘The League’
Photo credit: Magnolia Pictures

Director Sam Pollard has had a long and varied career in the film industry, beginning in the 1970s. He began as an editor of documentaries, getting his first director assignment on the groundbreaking “Eyes on the Prize” series on PBS, the history of the Civil Rights movement orchestrated by Dr. King. In the 1990s, he became the primary editor for Spike Lee, cutting the director’s films including “Mo’ Better Blues” (1990), “Jungle Fever” (1991), “4 Little Girls” (1997) and one part of “When the Levee Broke” (2010, also producer). He also edited the extraordinary documentary about Frank Sinatra, “All or Nothing at All” (2015).

As director, Sam Pollard continued his documentary journey, including for American Experience on PBS (profiles of August Wilson, Zora Neale Hurston, Marvin Gaye and John Wayne/John Ford), “Two Trains Runnin’ (2016), “Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me” (2017) and the influential doc, “The Talk: Race in America’ (2017), among his 19 credits. As a producer and editor, he has an astounding 48 credits for each.

The following interview – with Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com … took place in 2021, as Pollard released his seminal documentary on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “MLK/FBI.” For a review of “The League” … CLICK HERE.

In Part One the filmmaker talks about “MLK/FBI” and how its perspective was developed …

In Part Two, the craft of editing is discussed, and how that eye has served him both as editor and director …

By PATRICK McDONALD Editor and Film Critic/Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com