Alpha Man: The Brotherhood of MLK tells the little-known story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fraternity days as a member of the country’s first collegiate black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha. Hosted and narrated by Hill Harper, the film gives first hand accounts by King's associates and follows Dr. King from a 23-year-old divinity student in Boston and 1952 Alpha pledgee to Nobel Prize-winner and leading civil rights pioneer. The documentary also includes never been heard excerpts from Dr. King speaking at the 50th Anniversary of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first and only time he spoke at an Alpha convention.
As the film opens, a ninety-year-old Louis van Gasteren—a documentary filmmaker and artist famed in the Netherlands—is seated in a video editing suite, watching scenes of himself in the 1960s, a time when “anything was possible.” He reflects on how much he has changed, and that he is that same person and yet is not.
Paths of lives are crossed in one village in the West Bank. Along the broken water pipelines, villagers walk on their courses towards an indefinite future. Israel that controls the water, supplies only a small amount of water, and when the water streams are not certain nothing can evolve. The control over the water pressure not only dominates every aspect of life but also dominates the spirit. Bil-in, without spring water, is one of the first villages of the West Bank where a modern water infrastructure was set up. Many villagers took it as a sign of progress, others as a source of bitterness. The pipe-water was used to influence the people so they would co-operate with Israel’s intelligence. The rip tore down the village. Returning to the ancient technique of collecting rainwater-using pits could be the villagers’ way to express independence but the relations between people will doubtfully be healed.