ACORN and the Firestorm

Premiered May 21, 2018

Directed by

Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard

A sting to bring down community organizers sets off media frenzy affecting real people on all sides of political divide.

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About the Documentary

For 40 years, the controversial community organizing group ACORN sought to empower marginalized communities. Its critics, though, believed ACORN exemplified everything wrong with liberal ideals, promoting government waste and ineffective activism. These competing perceptions exploded on the national stage in 2009, just as Barack Obama became president. Fueled by a YouTube video made by undercover journalists, ACORN’s very existence would be challenged. ACORN and the Firestorm goes beyond the 24-hour news cycle and cuts to the heart of the great political divide.

The film unfolds through the perspectives of Hannah Giles and Bertha Lewis, two women on opposite sides of the political spectrum, as well as through the eyes of ACORN staff, to tell the story of a polarizing media frenzy that set the tone for elections to come.

The Filmmakers

Reuben Atlas is an independent filmmaker and lawyer, selected for DOCNYC’s inaugural 40 Under 40 list and as a Impact Partners Producers Fellow. He produced and directed with Sam Pollard, Acorn and the Firestorm, about the impactful and controversial community organizing group, ACORN. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was supported by Sundance, ITVS, Black Public Media, and the IDA, and broadcast on PBS' Independent Lens. He also co-directed with Jerry Rothwell the Netflix and Arte funded, Sour Grapes, about a counterfeit wine conman. His first film, Brothers Hypnotic, about the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, which featured Prince, Phil Cohran, and Damon Albarn, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, broadcast internationally and on PBS' Independent Lens and is distributed by Factory 25. He previously worked at Legal Aid in Paterson, NJ, in counseling at a maximum security prison, as a bartender in the Netherland Antilles, and for a Cuban newspaper in Costa Rica.

Sam Pollard has made over 50 films, including the Academy Award®-nominated documentary Four Little Girls, with Spike Lee, as well as HBO’s When the Levees Broke. He recently edited Alex Gibney’s Sinatra: All or Nothing for HBO and directed Slavery by Another Name for PBS. His 40 years of filmmaking credits as a producer, director, and editor also include the seminal civil rights series Eyes on the Prize.

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