Channing Kennedy of ColorLines is reporting that the documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is opening in New York City this week. The documentary is constructed entirely from hundreds of hours of archival footage of the black power movement, footage that's not just rare but unseen; it was shot by a Swedish news crew in the 1960s and 1970s, then left untouched in a Swedish TV station's cellar for 30 years, where it was discovered by documentary filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson.
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 drew critical acclaim after screening at Sundance in January. In the finished feature-length film, the present-day voices of Harry Belafonte, Erykah Badu, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, ?uestlove and others bring context to the history, which is shown through amazing footage and interviews.
Kennedy interviews Olsson, who discusses the special relationship between American blacks and Swedes prompted by Martin Luther King Jr.'s Nobel Peace Prize and Switzerland's radical outlook on issues of social justice. The filmmaker also discusses the U.S. government's plan to bring down the black power movement by pumping drugs into black communities and the real reason Stokley Carmichael (Kwame Ture) left the United States.
We know what film we'll be catching this week.
Read more at ColorLines.
In other news: Mississippi Hate-Crime Victim's Family Sues.