Feb 14: The Loving Story on HBO

The Loving Story tells of Richard and Mildred Loving—a white man and a part-black, part-Rappahannock woman—who were awoken at their home in Caroline County, Virginia, a month after their 1958 wedding and arrested for miscegenation, then a crime in 20 states. After optioning Phyl Newbeck’s book Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers, director Nancy Buirski tracked down 16mm footage of the pair from 1965. Rather than insert herself as a voice-of-God narrator, Buirski lets this lyrical archive (and intimate stills of the Lovings photographed for Life by Grey Villet) drive the story. The Lovings’ only living child and their lawyers (who won their landmark 1967 Supreme Court case) offer new commentary on the couple’s eight years in exile in Washington, D.C. “I like to think of it as a kind of fairy tale,” says Buirski of the film. “It’s a very safe place for the audience to receive a very important moral.”

Photo: Grey Villet/courtesy of HBO