UPDATE: Cinema Detroit is presenting two encore screenings of 1971, one on Saturday, April 25 at 3:00 p.m. and another on Sunday, April 26 at 5:00 p.m.

Before the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden… there was Media, Pennsylvania. On March 8, 1971, eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in a small town just outside Philadelphia. They took hundreds of secret files, and shared them with the public. In doing so, they uncovered the FBI’s vast and illegal regime of spying and intimidation of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.

Mailed anonymously, the documents started to show up in newsrooms. The heist yielded a trove of damning evidence that proved the FBI was deliberately working to intimidate civil rights activists and Americans nonviolently protesting the Vietnam War. The most significant revelation were references to COINTELPRO – a previously unknown illegal program overseen by lifelong FBI director J. Edgar Hoover – the Counter Intelligence Program.

John and Bonnie Raines, two of the members of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, with their children.

Despite searching for the people behind the heist in one of the largest investigations ever conducted, the FBI never solved the mystery of the break-in, and the identities of the members of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI remained a secret until now. For the first time, the members of the Citizens’ Commission have decided to come forward and speak out about their actions. 1971 is their story.

Executive-produced by Laura Poitras, director of this year’s Academy Award-winning Best Documentary Feature CITIZENFOUR, and told through a combination of exclusive interviews, rare primary documents, and contemporary national news coverage, the story of the Citizens’ Commission unfolds with haunting echoes to today’s questions of privacy in the era of government surveillance.

1971
Documentary, history, thriller – NR – 79 min – Tickets $9 – Get tickets online
Sat, April 25: 3:00 p.m.
Sun, April 26: 5:00 p.m.