According To The variety While at the Lumiere Festival in Lyon where he’s being honored with a career tribute, Michael Mann reflected on his time in Paris documenting the student uprisings of 1968 for NBC. That year, he said, left an indelible mark on him and his body of work.
“That experience was so formative to me personally, because ’68 was this pivotal year,” Mann told Thierry Fremaux, the Cannes boss who heads Lumiere Festival, at a packed masterclass that ran for nearly two hours. “It culminated in the Democratic Convention in Chicago and a police riot, in 500 students being killed the Mexico City, in the death of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. It was the pivotal year in wakening consciousness of people.”
Mann, who also talked about his early career in an interview with Variety ahead of the festival, revealed that many of his films are filled with references from that tumultuous era, including 1974’s Rumble in the Jungle in “Ali.”
