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Movie review: 'The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975' http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-blackpower-20110923,0,4110537.story Forgotten interview footage of some of the biggest names in the movement lend Goran Hugo Olsson's documentary its electric intensity. By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic September 23, 2011 Stokely Carmichael . Angela Davis. Huey P. Newton. Bobby Seale. Names to conjure with in recent American history, when the Black Power political movement was a force in the land, but names that no longer mean what they did back in the day. A Swedish filmmaker named Goran Hugo Olsson aims to change that with a singular documentary called "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975." It was Olsson who discovered reels of 16-millimeter interview footage of these significant individuals and others taken by Swedish television journalists, footage that had sat abandoned and forgotten in the network's archives. To see these clips is to think of the classic Weavers political song "Wasn't That a Time." A dramatic time for sure. Stitched together with contemporary audio commentary by artists like Erykah Badu and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, the images in "Black Power" are electric. They have the immediacy of history being lived in front of the camera and the charm of allowing us to glimpse the people who made that history before they turned into icons. The Swedish journalists who shot this footage got it partly because they were on the scene when the Black Power advocates came to Europe to speak and partly because they were curious enough to come to America to seek them out for further comment and conversation. Perhaps the most compelling footage involves the young and passionate Carmichael, the firebrand leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Carmichael is first seen speaking in Stockholm, in effect giving a tutorial on the differences between himself and the Rev. Martin Luther King in relation to nonviolence. "Dr. King's assumption," Carmichael explains, "is that your opponents will be moved by your suffering. For that to happen, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." Even more impressive is an interview situation in the apartment of Carmichael's mother, Mabel, who is so initially nervous about speaking in front of the camera that Carmichael himself patiently walks her though stories about his father's experiences with institutional racism. Starting in 1969, the Swedish interviewers concentrate on stories about the Black Panthers. We see footage and interviews with Newton and Seale, shots of Kathleen Cleaver in the Panther headquarters-in-exile in Algeria, and, most unforgettably, scenes of young children chanting in Panther schools in Oakland. "Come on, people, join in the struggle," they say. "Pick up a gun, put the pig on the run." Aside from the Carmichael footage, "Black Power's" most memorable interview is with Davis, the first interview she gave from her jail cell in Northern California while awaiting trial on charges that she provided the weapons in a courthouse shooting that left four people dead, including a judge. (She was acquitted.) Wearing a bright red sweater but looking worn and tired, she is both articulate and furious. "When someone asks me about violence, I find it incredible," she says. "A person asking that can have no idea about what black people have gone through in this country." Once the Panthers leave the scene, the Swedish television reports become more generic but still involving, like a piece on Lewis Michaux and his National Memorial African Bookstore in Harlem and an affecting interview with a young prostitute. "Black Power Mixtape's" contemporary audio, though it tries hard to involve us, can't hold a candle to this kind of footage. But if having these current voices on board helped get the luminous glimpses of the past back on the screen, we owe them a vote of thanks. kenneth.tu...@latimes.com ---------------------- Black Power — Swedish style http://www.wavenewspapers.com/entertainment/Black-Power--Swedish-style-130320683.html By BY OLU ALEMORU, Staff Writer Story Created: Sep 21, 2011 The political and physical response to centuries of oppression that manifested itself in the Black Power Movement of he late 1960s and early 1970s was — given its threat to the White power structure — inevitably undermined in America as a terrorist insurrection that had to be put down. This included the COINTELPRO (acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) — a war of infiltration, provocateurism, entrapment and assassinations against domestic activist organizations, most notably The Black Panthers, whom then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called “the most dangerous group in America.” However, that was not the case beyond these shores, where foreign governments and their people viewed such freedom movements as a right of the oppressed to self-determination. For instance, Scandanavian countries have been known for their solidarity with liberation movements. Norway was pivotal in the signing of the 1993 historic Oslo Accords between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization. And Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel gave the world The Nobel Peace Prize — which has been won by Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and President Barack Obama >From this tradition stems “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,” a fascinating >documentary playing an exclusive week-long engagement beginning Sept. 23 at >Santa Monica’s Landmark Nuart Theater. The movie culls 16mm footage that laid undiscovered in the cellar of a Swedish television station for 30 years, and combines it with contemporary music and audio interviews from leading Black artists, activists, musicians and scholars. The film features interviews and appearances by the likes of Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and commentary from super stage performers Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. The documentary is directed by Göran Hugo Olsson and co-produced by Louverture Films partners, Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes. In a discussion with journalists Monday in Los Angeles, Glover said the film connected strongly with his activist roots. “[There were] several reasons I wanted to be involved,” he explained. “Certainly, the fact that in some ways my life has been intertwined with the Black power movement when I was young. I’m 65 years old now, and when you’re a young person in 1967, you remember that. So, you’re always trying to articulate images that [are] a part of your life.” Also noteworthy, but too long to name individually, is the list of 28 Swedish cinematographers whose footage shaped the film’s narrative. The grainy footage opens in sleepy, rural Florida. The Vietnam War is going on overseas and perhaps the filmmakers’ natural naiveté make for an interesting contrast when a White store owner in town gives his opinion of living in America, saying a man has more freedom of speech, protection and possibility of a good life if he just works hard to get there. Meanwhile, at the other end of town, devoid of any businesses, where shacks take the place of homes, a Black man talks about coming back home from Vietnam, only to be “ridiculed and having to fight for his life in certain parts of the country.” Giving an outsiders’ perspective of the social upheaval that was taking place, the audience is taken on a journey from Carmichael criticizing King’s message of nonviolence, Malcolm X speaking in London, the Black Panther Movement in action, the Attica uprising and massacre, the attempted legal lynching of Davis, the emergence of Louis Farrakhan and the drug blight that infested Black communities like Harlem. “A boycott is a passive act, the most passive, political act anyone can commit,” said Carmichael. “[You’re saying], ‘We will not ride your buses.’ The major assumption [of the nonviolence movement] is that your oppressor will see your suffering and be moved to change his heart. But what if your oppressor has no conscience ... the U.S. has none?” Carmichael, who popularized the use of the term “Black Power,” is also shown interviewing his own Caribbean-born mother, chronicling the cycle of poverty and racism perpetrated against the Black man in American society and his emergence on the global stage. “Aren’t you worried about going to jail?” he is asked by a White reporter. “I was born in jail,” replied Carmichael. Carmichael’s influence, even beyond his death in 1998, is testified to by Kweli, who recalled an incident when he was pulled off a plane by the FBI for listening to one of the activists’ speeches. “Stokely was the first to understand and talk about Black Power,” Kweli said. “I was flying somewhere, and I don’t know how they knew — they must have planted some sort of bug — and I had a recording of a speech he made in 1967 when he said ‘This is for the FBI … I’m coming for you.’ Even today they’re still scared of him.” . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to sixties-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sixties-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
