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Black Panther Demonstration

In two hours, Nelson delivers many snapshots from across America first hand from people who lived, and often died terribly, for the cause of the Party’s Ten-Point Program.  And as the film personalizes the experiences of those who made up an organization known for its style, bravado and iconographic fists, as well as incessant message, it is easy to see how their values were very much aligned with those of today.

For the sake of ending police brutality, mass incarceration, and other institutionalized forms of oppression, masses of youth (because it seems almost all Party members were between childhood and age 30) took up their right to bear arms, evoking such a movement that is was mainly at the hands of the FBI the Party saw its decline. It is also why it is gut-wrenching to see those who were murdered for their affiliation.

Where other films like this year’s Netflix’s documentary on Nina Simone, or the 1995 biopic Panther, will leave you with poignant emotional reaction, Nelson’s work is stark in that it is purely textbook.  You will not be spooked with rage, (although there are stories that will leave you volleying between bafflement, heartbreak, and meditation) but rather intellectually challenged by all the personal recounts of a time that is parallel to, yet so so far away from, today.  You will experience the variety of voices who were involved, and you will not be directed on what to think.  It is disorienting to experience the Black Panther Party with such objectivity, but that is what makes this a solid and distinct telling of what has become lore for revolutionary hearts.  (Although, Elaine Brown has expressly noted her dissent with the film. )

In tracing through other films on the subject of the Black Panther Party, there are standouts A Huey P. Newton Story (2001) and the Black Power Mixtape Night 1967-1975 (2011), both documentaries, as well as the recent narrative film starring Kerry Washington, Anthony Mackie, and Jamie Hector, Night Catches Us (2010).  For as much as the Black Power fist means to culture, the cinematic exploration has been rare, and the field is wide for exploring the internal and personal costs of rebellion, as well as its national impact.

When Nelson set out to make this film, police brutality and mass incarceration were not on the national agenda.  Trayvon Martin was just another kid, and Sandra Bland was just a recent college graduate.  While the film studies a past national boiling point from the vantage of retrospect, we are now watching it with a particular perspective.  This is the film you see with at least one friend and debate whether or not we are still capable of revolution and if social media campaigns make a difference.

This is certainly an important film to support in the theater, as it serves as statement art in an era that remains well-worn from America’s last violent revolution, which may have been that of the Black Panther Party.  In the midst of such anger and frustration, Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of Revolution offers space for reflection and strategy. Having attended a screening with a friend, it was hard not to carry on for an hour contemplating all that we saw and how it holds up to today’s form of dissent that often is waged via social media.  This is something that the filmmaker also acknowledges, as there is a #PanthersTaughtMe campaign to offer a ground for the thoughts that will be sparked by this wide-reaching examination of the last heroes of resistance in America.  And given that the film was partially funded by a substantial Kickstarter campaign that supported the theatrical release, hopefully, there will be many voices engaged in modernizing an impact first socialized with a fist.

For information on show times, visit theblackpanthers.com, and take part in the conversation on being revolutionary by visiting pantherstaught.me

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Black Panther Documentary Merely Skims The Surface Of A Complex Movement  was originally published on hellobeautiful.com

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