133: Remembering Leon Gast & “When We Were Kings”

“When We Were Kings” director Leon King died on March 8 at age 84. He took over twenty years to make his Oscar-winning documentary about the boxers Muhammad Ali vs George Foreman, filmed in Zaire in 1974 and completed in 1996.Further links:Watch “When We Were Kings"Watch “Soul Power”Watch “Smash His Camera"New York Times obituary on Leon GastLeon Gast on the making of his first film “Our Latin Thing”Pure Nonfiction episode 15: Muhammad Ali on FilmThe New Yorker on William Greaves’ "The Fight"This episode's closing narration refers to the reckoning over documenting BIPOC stories. For more, read Sonya Childress & Natalie Bullock Brown in Documentary and Stanley Nelson in the Los Angeles Times.Pure Nonfiction host Thom Powers explores the story of Leon's perseverance in interviews with his wife Geri Spolan-Gast, producer David Sonenberg, editor Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte and filmmaker Barbara Kopple.