A Night at the Garden
A Night at the Garden is a 2017 short documentary film about the 1939 Nazi rally that filled Madison Square Garden in New York City.[1] The film was directed by Marshall Curry from footage found by archival producer Rich Remsberg, and was produced by Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook with Field of Vision.[2] The seven-minute film is composed entirely of archival footage and features a speech from Fritz Julius Kuhn, the leader of the German American Bund, in which anti-Semitic and pro white-Christian sentiments are espoused.
A Night at the Garden
Marshall Curry
Marshall Curry
Marshall Curry
James Baxter
First Look Media
- 2017 (online)
- January 26, 2018 (Sundance)
7 minutes
United States
English
Synopsis[edit]
The film uses footage from Monday, February 20, 1939, and opens outside Madison Square Garden with shots of the New York City Police Department reining in anti-Nazi counter-protesters along with a marquee that lists a "pro-American rally" scheduled on that night, above a National Hockey League match and a college basketball game later in the week. After a procession of flag bearers to a stage decorated with swastika-adorned pennants, U.S. flags, and a portrait of George Washington, a German-accented man leads the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance. Kuhn steps up to the podium and casually remarks about how he is depicted as a "creature with horns, a cloven hoof, and long tail" by "the Jewish-controlled press."
As he begins to outline a program calling for a "socially-just, white, Gentile-controlled United States" and "Gentile-controlled labor unions, free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination," a counter-protester rushes on stage in an attempt to attack Kuhn. He is beaten onstage by the Bund's paramilitaries, and as he is hauled away by the police the footage is slowed to focus on him. The footage ends with a rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by a German-accented woman, before cutting to a title card noting that the rally occurred when Adolf Hitler was overseeing construction of Nazi Germany's sixth concentration camp and seven months before its invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II.[3][4]
Release and reception[edit]
A Night at the Garden premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and was nominated for the 91st Academy Awards for Best Documentary Short.[6][7]