Paperny Films is taking the lead on a new project aimed at uncovering and bringing to trial unsolved civil rights murders in the American South, in collaboration with California’s Center for Investigative Reporting and PBS.

The Civil Rights Cold Case Project will be comprised of a four-part documentary series, radio shows, feature articles, and a website with interactive and video components.

President David Paperny says the idea came from David Ridgen’s 2007 investigative Mississippi Cold Case, a CBC doc about the 43-year-old murders of two black youths that led to the arrest of a suspect. Ridgen is coproducer alongside Paperny and Aynsley Vogel, who is director of factual development for the Vancouver company.

‘There are hundreds of unsolved civil rights crimes that we think we can help bring to justice,’ Paperny says. His prodco is well-known for socially conscious docs including The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter (nominated for an Academy Award in 1994) and the more recent Confessions of an Innocent Man.

Cold Case, expected to take several years, has four veteran investigative reporters stationed in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, where the project will have ‘story vans’ to gather first-person witness accounts of crimes committed in the 1960s. Paperny expects to have a permanent production office set up in the South by spring. The project has also asked for the FBI to release documents of cold cases, to uncover other unsolved murders, he says.

‘We’re hoping to see some of these stories go to trial,’ adds Paperny.

The company will also collaborate with the National Security Archive in Washington and National Public Radio, in addition to some U.S. law and journalism schools.

The doc series will be broadcast on PBS, though Paperny may approach Canadian broadcasters for second-window rights.