Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground’ on HBO Max, a Documentary That Reframes the Influential Work of Filmmaker Henry Hampton’s Award-Winning PBS Series

HBO Max documentary Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground is both a continuation and a new beginning. Director Sophia Nahli Allison’s hour-long film pays tribute to producer Henry Hampton’s 14-episode PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize, a chronicle of the U.S. civil rights movement which aired between 1987 and 1990 — the first six episodes of which recently debuted on HBO Max. And by tying in the movement’s more recent developments with the content of Hampton’s work, Allison bridges the gap to a new Eyes on the Prize series, which is currently in development, and surely will offer powerful stories of Black America to a new audience.

EYES ON THE PRIZE: HALLOWED GROUND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Henry Hampton’s archive is huge. Neatly stacked film cans fill rows and rows of shelves that stretch on and on. It’s a monument to his 30-year career as a filmmaker; he founded the production company Blackside, and produced many social justice documentaries, most notably Eyes on the Prize, which current activists cite as an inspiration: Patrisse Cullors, Phillip Agnew, Brittany Ferrell, Tarana Burke and many more testify to its influence.

Clips from Hampton’s archive mingle with footage from Eyes on the Prize and visual documentation of events that occurred since the series debuted. Names like Rodney King, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Trayvon Martin are placed alongside Medgar Evers and Emmett Till. Allison juxtaposes images from the 1950s and ’60s with those of the ’90s, the 2010s and 2020.

Amidst more traditional documentary fodder, we see actors dancing in magical-realist performance-art pieces staged by Allison. She introduces large conceptual ideas such as “ancestral rage” and “power,” and interviewees speak on them within the context of civil rights movements of the last 30 years. The director gives time to female and trans voices, the likes of which haven’t been traditionally represented. And finally, many activists answer the question: What exactly is “the prize”?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Mentioning Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground in the same breath as contemporary films I Am Not Your Negro, MLK/FBI, Judas and the Black Messiah and One Night in Miami, as well as Malcolm X and When We Were Kings is wholly warranted.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s so many passionate, informed voices here — I think Hemphill and Ferrell stand out ever so slightly as the commentators sharing the most profound experiences and soundbites.

Memorable Dialogue: Hemphill: “Healing is the work of getting other people’s stories out of your system, other people’s shame out of your body.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: HBO Max follows through nicely on a terrific idea: Instead of just dropping Eyes on the Prize in the content menu and hoping people find it, the streamer produced Hallowed Ground as an introduction — or for older generations, a reintroduction — to the series, and an assertion of its cultural significance. It also functions as a thematic stopgap between the original series and the (still mostly under wraps) new one. And in that sense, it’s a promotional tool, albeit one with great artfulness, and one that resonates with the strength of its message, because very few films of this ilk offer the weight of an archival interview with Rosa Parks, who shows such a weariness in her eyes, it’s an indelibly powerful moment of raw truth.

If anything, Hallowed Ground is a thesis statement for the upcoming documentary, which has a lot of ground to cover: The movement of the ’90s, which some interviewees here declare to be mostly “lost”; protests against police brutality from the last decade; the role of women and transgender people in modern-era civil rights discussions. Allison grazes the surface of these developments with some broad assertions and the occasional strong anecdote from interviewees. She presents the content with enough visual panache to make us hope she’ll handle future installments.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Hallowed Ground reframes Eyes on the Prize for the 21st century while also encouraging us to dig into the award-winning series. It stirs up some emotion and surely offers some inspiration to the next generation of activists — just like Hampton did.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground on HBO Max