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Bringing a Story from Stage to Screen, with an Assist from Photography

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The 2020 movie, One Night in Miami, is adapted from a stage production based on an imagined meeting between four Black icons of the 1960’s – Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay), Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cook. To bring the play, first staged in 2013, to the screen, cinematographer Tami Reiker got a visual assist from photography. Reiker selected images by photographers of the period the events occurred, notably Howard Bingham and Neil Leifer. Both were Mohamed Ali photographers. Bingham followed Ali his whole life. She also studied the street photographers of the time, in particular Saul Leiter and Garry Winogrand.

Mike Wharton, from “Cinematography,” PLSN, Dec. 2020, page 30