13/02/2011

Received to warm applause at a packed screening last night, Göran Olsson’s Swedish documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a fascinating journey into the Black American civil rights movement of that era. And its focus on African Americans’ fight for better rights echoes today’s plight from populations in the Middle East.

The film is based on exclusive 16mm footage from Swedish TV reporters that had been broadcast only once before on SVT, and then stored in the Swedish public broadcaster’s basement, until Olsson uncovered the exclusive archive material while doing research for another project.

“The material was not part of a film. It was a film it itself and it was my duty to offer it to world audiences,” said Olsson following the film’s premiere in Berlin, in the Panorama Dokumente section. Built like a mixed tape of music, where each song has been replaced by a year –edited chronologically from 1967 to 1975 – The Black Power Mixtape gives a fascinating view of the Black Power movement, its leading personalities (Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver) and the social and political climate of the time.

The Swedish angle is interesting not only from the standpoint of the reporters, who bring a certain naiveté and clear sense of compassion, but also in terms of the US/Swedish political relations of the early 1970s. Also, being Swedish, the journalists have had exclusive access to the black activists, and we see a relaxed Carmichael, filmed ‘backstage’ in between meetings, joking and taking on the role of interviewer with his own mother.

The footage of Davis in jail is probably the highlight of the film, where we understand her determination to become an activist when she describes the racism and violent acts against back people in 1970s America. Off-screen commentaries from activists such as Davis, actor/singer Harry Belafonte, poet Abiodun Oyewole, and hip hop singers Talib Kweli and Erykah Badu give a welcome contemporary perspective and analysis to the archive images. Most importantly, Olsson’s documentary focuses not on the human rather than violent aspect of a struggle for dignity and equal rights, an angle that has a particular resonance in light of the current upheaval in the Middle East.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at the recent Sundance Film Festival. The film was produced by STORY AB in Sweden, in co-production with Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes’ Louverture Films in the US (co-producers of last year’s Palme d’Or winner in Cannes, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). Cinetic Media is the US sales representative and Wide Management handles the rest of the world.