INDEPENDENT LENS
THE WITNESS
MONDAY, DECEMBER 9 @ 10:00PM & 11:30PM
The name Kitty Genovese became synonymous with bystander apathy after The New York Times reported that 38 witnesses watched her being murdered in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York – and did nothing to help. This version of events went largely unchallenged for half a century. The horrifying implications of the Times story reached across the city and the country, and would eventually impact lawmakers and lecture halls across the globe. At home, determined to prove he wasn’t like the witnesses who watched and did nothing, Kitty’s younger brother Bill Genovese, who was quite close to his big sister, volunteered to serve in Vietnam where he would lose both his legs in combat. More than 50 years later, The Witness follows Bill’s dogged search for the truth as he attempts to find out for himself what actually took place that fateful night of March 13, 1964.
