Icons of the burgeoning Civil Rights movement meet for a fateful evening in Director Regina King’s historical-drama, One Night in Miami.
King’s film is a fictional account of the night of February 25, 1964, where newly-crowned Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World Muhammad Ali is forced to celebrate his shocking victory over Sonny Liston outside of Miami Beach due to Jim Crow-era segregation laws. He gathers at the Hampton House Motel in Miami’s African American Overtown neighborhood with three of his closest friends — activist Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke and actor/athlete Jim Brown — for a historic evening where they shared their thoughts about the social pressures brought on by their celebrity; their responsibilities as influencers; and standing up, defending their rights and moving the country forward to equality and empowerment for all black people.
During her January 22 DGA Virtual Q&A conversation moderated by Director Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk), King shared how she used camera techniques to make stage play more cinematic and mirror the emotions of the characters.
“We can let the cameras make the room claustrophobic when we want it to be and we need the depth for when we want to have them feel worlds apart...” said King. “There was this feeling that Malcolm [X] was very isolated at times and that was what he was feeling in this moment of his life. I wanted the staging to reflect that, to push that even further. [By using] cubbyholes and having cutouts where we can put the camera, [we had] more opportunity to have those fly-on-the-wall moments visually. Feeling that vulnerable moment because each of them have vulnerable moments.”
One Night in Miami is King’s feature directing debut. Her other directorial works include the movies for television The Finest and Let the Church Say Amen; the documentary Story of a Village; and episodes of Insecure, The Good Doctor, Shameless, This Is Us, Pitch, Greenleaf, Animal Kingdom, The Catch, Scandal, Being Mary Jane and Southland.
King has been a DGA member since 2012 and serves as a member of the Western Directors Council.
You can listen to King's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.
About the DGA Virtual Q&A Program
Mirroring the ever-popular DGA Membership Screening Q&A program in the virtual space, DGA Members can now learn more about films directly from the filmmakers in this series of livestreamed conversations.
