Filmmakers Yael Melamede and Clare Smith Marash reflect on how their documentary explores the fraught history of free speech through the career of America’s preeminent First Amendment attorney, Floyd Abrams.
We gravitate towards material that explores the complicated realities that lie beneath the surface of hot topic issues. Yael Melamede began investigating issues surrounding free speech as an Executive Producer of the series “WHY WE HATE” and first reached out to Floyd Abrams to better understand our laws around hate speech and free speech more generally. Since that time, the tensions around free speech and its relationship to the press, national security, misinformation, hate speech, campaign finance, public health and technology – to name a few – have only intensified. Further, it seemed to us that the nation’s cultural relationship to free speech, so often viewed as a founding principle, was changing rapidly, and the conversations around the balance of our freedoms were becoming increasingly fraught. Clare Smith Marash, the daughter of journalists who came-of-age with the internet, wondered how the next generation might view, and evolve, this area of law. As such, in late 2019, we approached Abrams about sharing his story as a way of bringing the crucial and often misunderstood issues of the First Amendment to the fore.
With Floyd Abrams: Speaking Freely, we aim to capture the complexity of free speech issues through the story of one man who has had such an extraordinary impact on this area of law.
While we don’t always agree with his positions, Abrams has not only argued on behalf of the First Amendment for decades, he has embodied its highest ideals in his consistent defense of unpopular speech and his welcome of lively discussion and critique.
Imbued with this spirit, the film includes voices from many sides of the free speech debate, such as lawyers Theodore Olson, Jameel Jaffer, and Emerson Sykes; journalists Nina Totenberg and Judith Miller; scholars Zephyr Teachout and Kate Shaw; and other notable figures such as as Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and former Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. In a dynamic narrative Floyd Abrams: Speaking Freely brings together the drama of epic court cases, the inquisitiveness of journalistic enterprise and the personal and emotional spirit of a biopic.
Ultimately, through the story of a legal titan we aim to better understand the impact of lofty legal principles on our daily lives, and what the future of this law may look like.
— Yael Melamede, Director & Producer and Clare Smith Marash, Writer & Producer
