The documentary series dedicated to the former American football star will be broadcast on Arte on July 7 and 8. Awarded last February at the 89th Academy Awards, the document traces the rise and fall of OJ Simpson, from the 1960s to the present day.
After a first broadcast last February on Viceland, a channel distributed exclusively by Canal+, “O.J. Simpson: Made in America” arrives on a free-to-air channel. Given its duration (7h30 in total), Arte preferred to cut Ezra Edelman’s work into five episodes of 1h30 each. The first two will be available on Friday July 7 from 8:50 p.m. to midnight. three more will follow on Saturday July 8 from 8:50 p.m. to 1:40 a.m.
This format, longer than the usual documentaries, allowed its director to look in depth at the rise and fall of OJ Simpson, from his media debut as an American football star to his incarceration in 2007 for robbery. army and kidnapping. His trial, highly publicized in 1995, is obviously at the heart of the documentary, but Ezra Edelman also wanted to contextualize the case by broadening his story to the city of Los Angeles, the scene of the trial, its racial tensions and the stormy relations between the police and the African-American community.
New light on the trial of OJ Simpson
To reopen this file, he went to find new stock footage and audio tracks. Above all, he met more than 70 people, all of whom played a role during the trial. The director notably went to meet members of the prosecution, prosecutor Marcia Clark and lawyer Bill Hadgmann, defense lawyer Carl E. Douglas or prosecutor F. Lee Bailey, childhood friends of OJ Simpson, trial jurors, former LAPD investigators, civil rights activists or the families of the victims.
Ezra Edelman wanted to shed new light on this case in which OJ Simpson was accused of having stabbed to death his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. After a highly publicized trial that divided the American population, the star of the land was finally found not guilty. Twenty years later, history still fascinates America, as evidenced by this documentary, acclaimed by the American press, but also the series “American Crime Story: The People vs O.J. Simpson“, aired last year on the FX channel.
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