a very prominent road there. there were fires from tires that were being burned from different stores or from cars that were out on the street. i mean, it was an incredible experience to be part of it. unbelievable, wondering, what has happened to make this occur? but when you were looking for witnesses, and as you were reviewing tapes, what was that process like for you? did you get emotional at any time? absolutely. i mean, i should add that our film l.a. 92 is completely told through archival footage. we didn t interview anyone, the film is totally told through footage at the time. which made it an age-old experience because we didn t really get the ability to sort of hear people talk about it and analyze it and talk about their memories of it in the way that we are. we basically were just faced
l.a. 92. it s a documentary about the los angeles rights 25 years ago. joining me now from l.a. is jonathan chen. he s the producer of that national geographic film. with big credit to you, jonathan, you lookal those things, you see that courtroom and it takes us back to that time. talk about where you were when the verdicts were read and what drives you to want to tell this story. thanks for having me on. i appreciate it. i was actually a young film student at usc, so i was right there in the heart of it in south central. and i was quite new to los angeles. i had been here for maybe four or five months. and it was an incredibly powerful moment to watch my the city that i had chosen to be home explode amidst the racial tensions and all kinds of things like that. so i think when we realized that
los angeles city. we have no police support whatsoever. this is a riot. i will use whatevers for is necessary to restore order. 25 years after the los angeles riots, the images continue to haunt us. the chaos that tore apart the racial fabric of a multiculture mecca when battle lines both real and sensizationalized tore apart the black, latino communities. l.a. 92, the new documentary premieres tonight on national geographic channel. it is, of course, the story intrinsically tied to one of the
if not decades of grievance of people angry about poverty, unemployment, poor housing, poor education. remember riots, uprisings back in 1965 in watts, the watts section of los angeles. same thing. police stop. discrimination. so on and so forth. this continues. and the rodney king situation and the riots, rebellion of 92 were a stop on a continuum. you could argue we talk about things like ferguson, michael brown case and baltimore, cleveland, other places, some of the dynamics are still the same down to present day. ron, thank you very much. a pleasure to have you still here. i was a child reporter. yes, you were. we ll also had have the director of a documentary l.a. 92 to talk about it too. donald trump biographer will join me next to talk about fortunate s rally and what he