SUNDANCE 2015: THE BLACK PANTHERS VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.



Bringing sexy back (those cops do not know how to act)

 

By Don Simpson

 

Stanley Nelson's The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution opens with the story of the three blind men and an elephant to illustrate that the Black Panther Party meant something different to everyone. When the organization was formed in 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale's goal was to put an end to police brutality against Blacks in Oakland, California with legally militarized patrols. The Panthers enjoyed a meteoric rise to the national consciousness due to the media appeal of black men clad in black leather jackets and berets, brandishing guns in public places like the State Capitol grounds in Sacramento. With this free publicity, their membership grew exponentially and chapters began to pop up around the country.

 

Totally unprepared for all of the attention that they gained, the Panthers seemed destined to self-destruct from the very beginning, especially once they became targeted as a threat by the United States government. Making certain that the Panthers would never become a unified entity with a single, well-respected leader (a "messiah"), J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI's top secret counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) to destroy the Panthers from the inside. The FBI also knew that if Panther leaders were trapped in prison, the organization would grow increasingly fragmented. This is when the aforementioned analogy to the blind men and the elephant really makes the most sense.

 

Nelson's documentary relies heavily upon talking head interviews to capture the multitude of perspectives (Seale is strangely missing from the interviewees). The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution takes a very black and white perspective when chronicling the Panthers' interactions with the police; though in most cases the Panthers were probably right and the police were probably wrong, Nelson seems afraid to question the legitimacy of the Panthers' actions. For example, Nelson does not care if Newton actually killed Oakland police officer John Frey or not, he merely focuses on the media attention that the "Free Huey!" protests received. That said, Nelson has no qualms about revealing the warts of the Panther leadership -- Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, specifically, are shown in fairly unfavorable light.

 

The timing of The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution could not be more perfect, with police brutality against black populations once again getting media attention across the United States. We are approaching the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Black Panther Party, there is a black President in the White House, but otherwise it seems like very little has changed. Well, okay, the mainstream media's perspective has changed; black militant groups would never be glamorized in the same way that Panthers were in the late 1960s. Now when the media covers protests of police brutality, they focus solely on the supposed violent and destructive acts of the "unruly mob" rather than the purpose of the protest itself. Maybe -- just maybe -- The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution will remind the media that revolution is incredibly sexy and it should be televised. 



SFIFF 2011: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 By: Faiz No comments

Angela Davis in The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.

Remember me to America

By Don Simpson

You never know what you might discover in those dusty old boxes that have been sitting in the basement for decades. In the case of Swedish documentary director Göran Hugo Olsson, he unearthed — technically, undusted — a treasure trove of pristine, never-before-seen, 30-year-old 16mm reels of film in the basement of the Swedish Television network. The footage was originally shot by Swedish Television journalists who studiously documented the Black Power movement in the United States during the 1960s and ’70s.

Why were the Swedes so damn interested in the Black Power movement in the U.S.? (Rumor has it that the Swedes amassed more footage of the Black Power movement than the entire U.S.) Well, as far as I can surmise from the footage, the Swedes were probably attempting to prove that they shared a Utopian goal of “equal rights for all” with the Black Power movement. (Swedes were also notably obsessed with the anti-war movement in the U.S. as well, a movement with which Black Power was synonymous.)

While the mainstream media in the U.S. tried their best to ignore the Black Power movement altogether — or they painted Black Power as a form of violent terrorism — Swedish Television practically glorified the likes of Stokely Carmichael, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Emile de Antonio and Angela Davis -- all of whom appear in The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. This is more than likely why TV Guide considered Swedish Television’s coverage of the U.S. to be anti-American. (The U.S. broke diplomatic ties with Sweden in 1972 after the Swedish Prime Minister compared the atrocities in Vietnam to those of the Nazis.) Besides, white America was too busy pretending that everything was alright to pay attention to a bunch of "Socialist" Scandinavians; Olsson is quick to place The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 into its proper context, beginning the documentary with archival footage of a white Miami Beach restaurateur obliviously touting the incomparable freedom and equality in the U.S., a statement that is promptly negated by clips of Hallandale, a poor black shantytown a short drive north of Miami Beach.

Olsson’s The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 views the Black Power movement via the kino eye of Swedish filmmakers — outsiders philosophizing about the state de la démocratie en Amérique. One would assume that these white-as-driven-snow foreign journalists probably had a difficult time immersing themselves into the black as midnight as a moonless night subculture, but the resulting footage reveals a deeply entrenched kinship and trust between the filmmakers and their subjects. The outsider perspective lends a very unique advantage to the footage. Although we can all but prove the journalists’ allegiance to the Black Power movement, the footage is still significantly less culturally biased than film shot by a member of the Black Power movement. 

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 features voice overs by a menagerie of prominent black personalities of the 21st century: Davis, Harry Belafonte, ?uestlove, Erykah Badu, Sonia Sanchez, Talib Kweli, Robin Kelley, Kathleen Cleaver, Abiodun Oyewole and John Forte. For the most part, the narrations seem to be unscripted, as if the participants are reacting naturally to the Swedish Television footage (you know, like a DVD commentary).

The titular mixtape refers simultaneously to both sound and image. ?uestlove provides an impeccable compilation of era-appropriate tunes, while Olsson reveals a priceless compilation of 16mm footage: Carmichael is practically worshiped as an iconic hero in Europe; J. Edgar Hoover declares the Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program to be the most dangerous internal threat to America; iconic images of Che Guevara purposefully sneak into the frame from time to time; school children studying at a Black Panther headquarters sing a song with the refrain “pick up the gun”; a Swedish tour guide warns his all-white audience not to visit Harlem; Lewis Farrakhan emerges as a rising Muslim star, providing strict discipline in a very chaotic time; an imprisoned Davis provides a comprehensive refutation of the Black Power movement’s supposed embrace of violence. 

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 provides us with a glorious portrait of the socially and economically conscious side of the Black Panthers as they try their best to address their local impoverished communities’ basic needs while always keeping larger national issues (the Vietnam war, record levels of incarceration, extreme poverty, drug addiction, lack of government accountability, failing public schools and the pervasiveness of structural racism) in their sights. The Black Power movement did fuel societal change even if their influence on other liberation struggles and political movements has been erased from U.S. history textbooks.

Thankfully, we now have access to this rare Swedish footage to remind us of the significance of Black Power as Olsson contextualizes the movement and highlights its successes and failures.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 screens April 30, 9 p.m., Sundance Kabuki Cinemas; May 3, 6 p.m., New People. For more information: Renegades of funk.