Two Towns of Jasper
2002, NR, 89 min.
Directed by Whitney Dow, Marco Williams, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring .

As part of our local celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday, a special pre-screening of this intriguing P.O.V. documentary will be shown in advance of its national airing on PBS (cable channel 9) on Wednesday (1/22), and the live town meeting anchored by Ted Koppel from Jasper, Texas, the following evening, Thursday (1/23). The documentary was filmed by two separate film crews, one black and one white. Each segregated crew then interviewed and filmed Jasper residents of their own race regarding the aftermath of the hideous race-motivated murder of James Byrd in 1998. The film helps elucidate some of the chasms that exist between the black and white communities in Jasper, and captures rare moments of unguarded conversations.

This article appears in January 10 • 2003.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.