{"id":210554,"date":"2024-03-25T07:30:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T11:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=210554"},"modified":"2024-03-14T14:05:58","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T18:05:58","slug":"latest-project-from-uconn-filmmaker-a-personal-one-uncles-story-told-in-a-double-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/03\/latest-project-from-uconn-filmmaker-a-personal-one-uncles-story-told-in-a-double-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Project from UConn Filmmaker a Personal One; Uncle\u2019s Story Told in \u2018A Double Life\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Catherine Masud was young, maybe 9 or 10 years old, she happened to be home alone after school one day when two men wearing sunglasses and long dark trench coats, dressed as if they were out of a movie, showed up on her family\u2019s front stoop in inner city Chicago.<\/p>\n

The front door of the home was a full pane of glass, completely see-through and screaming for curtains by today\u2019s standards, she says, so there was no hiding from the men who showed her an FBI badge and asked for her mom.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s not home yet,\u201d she told them. \u201cCan I ask your names?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo need for names. Just tell her we\u2019ll come by another day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Masud says she watched as the men turned and walked away, down the sidewalk and into a dark-colored Cadillac parked on the street, then drove away.<\/p>\n

The minutes-long encounter might have rattled anyone \u2013 young or old.<\/p>\n

For Masud and her family, though, the FBI at that time surveilled much of their lives, tapping phones and tracking whereabouts as government agents searched for Masud\u2019s uncle who was accused of passing a gun to prisoners\u2019 rights leader George Jackson and sparking an uprising at San Quentin Prison in 1971.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was told you never talk to your friends about this,\u201d Masud says of the FBI and the story of her extended family. \u201cI was told you never mention the name Stephen Bingham to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The past is never dead\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

An assistant professor-in-residence jointly appointed in UConn\u2019s Department of Digital Media & Design<\/a> and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute<\/a>, Masud was 8 when her uncle vanished from his life in California after the tumultuous events of 1971 when Jackson, three correctional officers, and two inmates were killed.<\/p>\n

\"Filmmaker
Filmmaker Catherine Masud, an assistant professor-in-residence jointly appointed in UConn’s Department of Digital Media & Design and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, and her brother, Alfred, roughhouse with their uncle, Stephen Bingham, only months before he went underground in the wake of the 1971 riot at San Quentin Prison in California. (Photo courtesy of Catherine Masud)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She says she and her brother didn\u2019t really understand what had happened, especially since Bingham had visited Chicago only a few months prior, roughhousing with the children in favorite uncle style.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up thinking he was probably dead,\u201d Masud says, noting that even her grandparents in southeastern Connecticut contended they didn\u2019t know what happened to their youngest child. \u201cBut the FBI kept coming by our house and our phones were tapped, so you could say it cast a shadow over my childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, as children do, Masud grew up. She went to college at Brown University, then went to work for an overseas nongovernmental organization.<\/p>\n

By the time Bingham returned home, turning himself in to police and later facing charges of first-degree murder, Masud had settled in South Asia where she made films with her Bangladesh-born husband, Tareque. Geography stymied a chance to reconnect, more than just hearing about one another in family circles, until a few years ago when she herself came home.<\/p>\n

What did he do all those years?<\/p>\n

What was it like to assume a new identity?<\/p>\n

Who was this person he\u2019d become?<\/p>\n

\u201cI approached him about telling his story in a documentary. He waffled at first and said he wasn\u2019t sure he wanted to talk about it,\u201d she says. \u201cHe said that what happened was in the past. But as I found out later, it was very much in the present for him. The past is never dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of three long interviews with Bingham, Masud learned about her uncle\u2019s involvement in the Freedom Summer Project in 1964, his work with Cesar Chavez and the farm worker strikes in California, and his early career as an advocacy lawyer.<\/p>\n

She answered the questions of what he did during those 13 years, where he went, and how he survived. She learned about his French wife, his continued activism, his child.<\/p>\n

And in interviews with his legal team, friends, family, acquaintances, and supporters, she learned so much more about the Stephen Bingham who she remembered only as the fun uncle who wore a leather jacket and rode a motorcycle.<\/p>\n

Telling more than just one story<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA Double Life,\u201d<\/a> which premiered late last year and will be screened at UConn in April, lays out not just Bingham\u2019s story, but considers the roles of lawyers in social movements and how racial tensions in America in the late 1960s and early 1970s affected so many aspects of life, including Bingham\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\"The
The documentary, “A Double Life,” features the story of Stephen Bingham as told by his niece, filmmaker Catherine Masud, assistant professor-in-residence jointly appointed in UConn’s Department of Digital Media & Design and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. (Photo courtesy of Catherine Masud)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe family is also part of the story,\u201d Masud says. \u201cThere are intergenerational tensions that were important to talk about and it was important to address the legacy out of which Steve came \u2013 this background of white privilege, grandson of a U.S. senator, son of a state senator.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the film, Masud lets Bingham and his associates tell the story, interjecting as narrator only a few times. The film isn\u2019t her story after all.<\/p>\n

Privately, hers is one of speculation: Could she have walked by her uncle on the streets of Paris in 1983 when she was studying there abroad? It\u2019s also part shared experience: Both had close loved ones, a husband and a daughter, killed by motor vehicles in different years and different places, and still both found strength in that loss to fight for improved road safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the moment I met Steve after he came out of hiding because I have this visual of him kind of backlit and all I could see was his hair. Somebody said to me, \u2018Oh, here\u2019s Steve.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t believe I was meeting him, and he was walking toward me. It was very strange because here was this person who all these years I thought was never coming back and might even be dead, yet there he was,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Masud says that even nearly 30 years later, as she was getting up the nerve to approach him with the idea for a documentary, she was intimidated \u2013 her, an award-winning filmmaker<\/a> who\u2019s worked with survivors of mass atrocities and genocide.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though he\u2019s a very warm person, he\u2019s also sometimes reserved or standoffish. I think that was part of the change that happened in his personality because of the time he spent underground, always being on guard, always looking over his shoulder,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She also says she hesitated in asking him because she didn\u2019t want to be the source of more trauma as Bingham relived his past. But realizing time heals and older age often prompts reflection, now ended up being just the right time for the project – for both of them.<\/p>\n

Masud is back in the United States, rebuilding a life here after her husband was killed in 2011 in Bangladesh along with most of her film crew. \u201cA Double Life\u201d is her first feature-length project in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\"Stephen
Stephen Bingham lived underground for 13 years in the wake of the 1971 riot at San Quentin Prison in California. He lived under the name Robert Boarts. Here, he’s pictured by the Seine River in Paris in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy of Catherine Masud)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI was in Bangladesh for most of my adult life with almost a different identity. It wasn\u2019t a secret identity, it wasn\u2019t underground, but it was a bifurcated existence because when I came back here, I felt like a foreigner,\u201d she says. \u201cI could identify with what it must have been like for Steve. He was completely immersed in the culture of a different place. It was similar for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says Bingham doesn\u2019t regret the years he spent living underground and would have regretted only not returning to the U.S. His father, Masud\u2019s grandfather, paid his annual dues to the bar association, so Bingham wouldn\u2019t lose his license and could go right back to practicing upon his return, should he return.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this film gives audiences some insight into what Steve went through, if it gives them some inspiration and teaches them the importance of sticking to your principles even through adversity, then I\u2019d be happy,\u201d she says. \u201cI would be glad if it gives them a deeper understanding of not just a particular historical period but how that resonates in the present and what we have to learn from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cA Double Life\u201d will be screened Monday, April 1, at 4 p.m. in the Konover Auditorium in the Thomas J. Dodd Center for Human Rights. It was screened at the Pan African Film & Arts Festival in January and the Mill Valley Film Festival in October, where it won an Audience Favorite Award.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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