The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Covering the period from the rise of the Black Power movement to the beginning of the inner-city drug plague that tore it apart, the filmmakers have excavated some remarkable moments from the archives. A jailhouse interview with cause celebre Angela Davis displays the wrongly accused professor's intense erudition even in the face of appalling treatment; a black-and-white segment of famed activist Stokely Carmichael interviewing his own mother is touching; and a sit-down chat with Louis Farrakhan on the eve of his rise to power in the Nation of Islam shows the leader's serpentine charm already eerily intact.
One of the more interesting factors here is that all the footage is presented in a completely Swedish context, meaning that scenes of poverty in Harlem are framed in much the same way that American TV news would present starvation in Ethiopia.
(...) Voiceover commentary is provided by a grab bag of figures past and present, ranging from the eloquent (Davis again, Last Poets member Abiodun Oyewole, Harry Belafonte) to the perplexing (Talib Kweli). Original music from the Roots bandleader Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Om' Mas Keith is groovy.
Andrew Barker, Variety
Duration: 93 min
Dialogue: English
Age limit: K15
