Film Series
Say It Loud: Cinema in the Age of Black Power, 1966—1981
As black consciousness spread across the globe in the mid-1960s, it gave rise to a radical cinema that both reflected and worked to further the cause of African-American liberation. From surprisingly subversive major releases to on-the-ground documents of Black Panthers in action to the expressive social portraits of the LA Rebellion, this cinematic companion to the exhibit Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (opening September 14 at the Brooklyn Museum) brings together raw, revolutionary, powerfully relevant records of a struggle that continues to this day.
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power first ran at London’s Tate Modern from Jul—Oct 2017. Special thanks to Zoe Whitley, Curator, International Art at Tate Modern.
This jolting work of DIY journalism captures the righteous anger of black anti-war protesters and veterans during a historic 1967 march on the United Nations.
Robert Downey Sr.’s wildly irreverent satire—in which chaos ensues when the sole black exec at Madison Ave. ad agency becomes chairman of the board—is a gonzo time machine back to a decidedly un-PC past.
Documentarian William Greaves’ meta-cinematic mind-bender—involving three camera crews in search of a movie—is a one-of-a-kind counterculture masterpiece.
Suppressed for decades by the FBI, the most radical, anti-white supremacy statement of the blaxploitation era follows a disillusioned black CIA agent who builds a guerilla army intent on government overthrow.
Jules Dassin’s hard-hitting, unjustly overlooked political thriller is a vivid record of an era when black resistance was evolving from nonviolence to revolution.
An audacious mix of satire, whiplash stylistics, and anti-colonialist indignation, this scorching rebuke of white supremacy charts the freewheeling, sometimes surreal experiences of an African in Paris.
Widely regarded as the first black British feature film, this absorbing portrait of a London teenager struggling to find his place in the world considers what it means to be an outsider in your own society.
Twin transmissions from the British Black Power movement: a conversation with James Baldwin and comedian-activist Dick Gregory screens alongside a freewheeling counterculture freak-out.
Trailblazing director Sarah Maldoror’s bracing call to revolution dramatizes Angola’s anti-colonialist struggle via the story of a wife’s relentless search for her imprisoned resistance leader husband.
Haile Gerima’s stunningly original mix of vérité-style authenticity, densely stylized surrealism, and radical agitprop depicts a struggling LA mother’s political awakening.
Charles Burnett’s landmark of American neorealism screens alongside shorts by fellow LA Rebellion directors Alile Sharon Larkin and Don Amis.
Heralded as the greatest jazz film ever made, this exhilarating lost classic from the LA Rebellion links African-American music to the struggle for black liberation.
Films by Barbara McCullough, Jamaa Fanaka, Ulysses S. Jenkins, and Edward Owens are featured in this selection of works that are as formally daring as they are culturally subversive.
Made in France, Melvin Van Peebles’ striking feature debut mixes freewheeling Nouvelle Vague stylistics with an incisive look at European and American attitudes towards race.
A racist white insurance salesman wakes up one morning to discover he’s become black in Melvin Van Peebles’ only studio film, a subversive statement of Black Power smuggled into a mainstream commercial comedy.
A rare, powerfully propulsive call to arms made in collaboration with Malcolm X.
Isaac Hayes, Richard Pryor, and other legends commemorate the Watts Rebellion.
Proto-rappers the Last Poets take their radical message to the streets of Harlem.
A boy comes of age in 1920s Kansas in the first African-American-directed studio film.
A chilling investigation into the assassination of the Black Panther party leader.
A raw, you-are-there dispatch from the frontlines of social unrest in 1968 Chicago.
Explores the influence of the revolutionary poet, playwright, and back nationalist.
William Klein and Agnés Varda document the Black Panther movement.