ThinkFilm will be putting Keith Beauchamp’s The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till into theatres nationwide in October. The doc will have an early exclusive run at the Film Forum starting on 8.17. I’ve seen Beauchamp’s doc, and to be honest I found it an incomplete portrait of Till and the horrible crime that ended his life at age 14 in the summer of 1955. While visiting relatives in Mississippi from his native Chicago, Till was killed by at least two rural white guys (others may have been involved) for the sin of having made a sexually suggestive comment to one of the guys’ wives. The film acknowledges that Till may have unwittingly provoked this woman by flouting social taboos, but accounts of what he allegedly said to the woman are much more matter-of-fact in at least one other account of the case that I’ve read. (Check out the site for the PBS “American Experience” doc called The Murder of Emmett Till.) Beauchamp looked into the case for roughly ten years and made an effort to uncover new details behind this ghastly event, which helped to launch the civil rights movement. A press release says that Beauchamp’s research on the film led to the Justice Department reopening the case on 5.10.04. And yet The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till barely explores or even seems concerned with the fact that no follow-up measures or investigations occured after Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam admitted to having killed Till (after being acquitted of murder charges in a Mississippi court) in a January 1956 issue of Look magazine. It’s a good film, but I must say it’s not a brilliant or even-toned one because it is too heavily invested in the martyrdom of a chubby kid who accidentally stepped into it.