N.Y. City Subpoenas Ken Burns Film on "89 Jogger Rape In a new movie, the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns explores the lives of the men who were convicted, and later exonerated, in the racially charged 1989 Central Park jogger rape case. Now lawyers for New York City want to explore if much of the film's unpublished interviews and unreleased footage might help them defend against a $50 million federal lawsuit filed by the men nine years ago. City lawyers have subpoenaed notes and outtakes from the film, "The Central Park Five," which includes in-depth interviews of the five men, who as teenagers came to embody racial tensions in a city overtaken by rampant crime. Mr. Burns said the subpoena, dated Sept. 12, came after the city had spent years rebuffing requests for interviews that he felt would help best explain the actions taken by law enforcement officials involved in the prosecutions. "There is a great deal of disappointment that it came to this, given the fact that we had given so many of the factions in this complicated story many, many opportunities, on a regular basis, to comment," he said in an interview. The city has long maintained that officers and prosecutors acted in good faith based on the best information available, and that what became available later, including the confession of a serial rapist, cannot retroactively alter that fact. "We believe that based on the information that the police and prosecutors had at the time, they had probable cause to proceed, and the confessions were sound," said Celeste Koeleveld, the city's executive assistant corporation counsel for public safety. She added that the interviews of the subjects speaking of their confessions and their years in prison were clearly vital to the city's defense and not available elsewhere. "This is the plaintiffs, all of them, discussing the heart of the litigation," she said. Ms. Koeleveld said that to prevail in their claims of coerced confessions, the men must show misconduct by law enforcement officials, and not simply that the outcomes were incorrect. The five men, who were teenagers at the time, were held and interviewed by the police for more than 24 hours before they confessed. Their arrests led to headlines that included "wolf pack" and the coined term "wilding" that fueled racial divisions. The men recanted almost immediately and have maintained their innocence ever since. But all five were convicted in two trials, based largely on their confessions. About a decade later, Matias Reyes, who had been convicted of a string of rapes on the Upper East Side that same summer, bumped into one of the Central Park Five, Kharey Wise, in an upstate prison. Mr. Reyes eventually confessed, and his DNA matched evidence found on the Central Park victim. Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney at the time, ordered a new investigation and, after his recommendation, a Manhattan judge vacated the convictions. The film is a tightly woven two hours, much different in pacing and emotion than Mr. Burns's multipart epics on baseball, jazz and the Civil War. It has its roots in work that Mr. Burns's daughter, Sarah, began while a student at Yale University. Her research eventually became a book. Mr. Burns, Sarah Burns and her husband, David McMahon, who has worked for Mr. Burns's film company for 14 years, wrote, directed and produced the film together. The movie has been shown in film festivals and is scheduled for theatrical release in New York City next month. It explores many questions surrounding the convictions, pointing out that the chronology of events suggests the five men were not in the area of the park where the rape occurred, their DNA was not found on the victim, and their confessions contradicted one another's. David N. Dinkins, who was the city's mayor then, is shown reading a passage from the Morgenthau report saying that the confessions differed on nearly every aspect of the crime, and that some were simply contrary to established fact. "Now, this is a damn shame," Mr. Dinkins says solemnly. Mr. Burns, who said he grew more emotional about the matter as he learned more about the men's plight, said the delays in the case hurt the five men yet again. "Not much has happened," he said in the interview. And that, I think, is an unfortunate thing, that this was already justice denied, and now justice delayed. John Siegal, a lawyer representing the filmmakers, said the city's demand for unpublished material requires the city to show how the material is necessary to its defense and unavailable elsewhere. "We don't think they are going to be able to make that showing," Mr. Siegal said. Mr. Burns has publicly said he hopes the film will push the city toward settling the case; Ms. Koeleveld said that Mr. Burns had crossed the line from journalism to advocacy. She said his sentiment demonstrated that he met the legal definition of being aligned with the plaintiffs, also part of the legal test for the subpoena. An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a lawyer representing the makers of the film "The Central Park Five." He is John Siegal, not Siegel.