Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.
Where to find it: YouTube (may not be the best copy)
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Documentary on the Black Power movement
Recommendation rating: 5/5
What I like about it: great film, great subject
What I don’t like about it: it’s not narrative, more a meditation
Review:
Through the years featured in the title, a Swedish documentary crew toured the United States, interviewing figures involved in the Black Power movement – including Angela Davis, Kwame Ture and Huey Newton – for a sympathetic television documentary back home. Here, this footage is raided and assembled with modern-day voiceovers from Angela Davis, Talib Kweli and Questlove, among others. The intimate access gotten by the Swedes makes this unmissable – see an extended prison interview with Davis, Ture burning his draft card and a class of Black Panther children turning Wilson Pickett’s Land of a Thousand Dances into an anti-police resistance chant.
Content notes (may contain spoilers): racism, violence, guns