Every year there are at least a handful of films that use the civil rights movement as essentially a backdrop to tired, odiously sentimental lift-me-up narratives. In contrast, there are, to be terrifically optimistic, about ten films every decade that offer a modicum of genuine insight into the actions, ideas, and figures instrumental in the push towards equality for African Americans, an equality that is still troublesomely uneven. Is this discrepancy just a simple mistake, or something more troublesome?
Last year, Tanya Hamilton's electrifying Night Catches Us took a hard, sober look at race and violence in Philadelphia, following the cooling of the black power movement in the 1970s and the splintering of ties throughout the black community. Highlighted by stunning performances by Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie, Night Catches Us was tough and poetic, realized in a complex narrative shell and unremittingly sincere and honest in its emotional highs and lows.
The film spoke to some touchy truths but was a fiction, whereas Göran Olsson's new film, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, is made up largely of footage of interviews, speeches, tours through New York ghettos and meetings with community leaders at the headquarters of Afrocentric organizations from the titular era. Swedish journalists, who were essentially vilified for not vilifying groups like the Panthers, groups who were characterized as terrorist organizations in American media and by most law-enforcement figures, are responsible for this grainy, arresting footage, and the filmmaker more than hints that the domestic issues that African Americans have suffered over the years is echoed in a great deal of this country's foreign policies and attitude towards the foreign press.
It's an interesting idea, one that certainly would make for some lacerating debate, but Olsson doesn't develop it quite enough and thus, like this assemblage, the concept seems unfocused and the subject matter feels as if it is being handled with kid gloves. How Olsson puts it all together feels a bit remedial, even if a good portion of the footage is moving and provocative. I'm speaking of those few moments when we get unfiltered tirades and bites of wisdom from Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, the latter of which is seen giving an interview in jail in the film's penultimate moment of clarity. Incarcerated after fleeing California, in the wake of her hand in the murder of Judge Harold Haley and five others during a hostage situation in Marin County, Davis is seen but more importantly heard, as she speaks bluntly about how violence and anger are seen through her eyes and, to a degree, to the black power movement.
It sounds odd, but the biggest problem with Olsson's film is that we so rarely get to just listen to these important leaders and members of the movement speak. In fact, the most frustrating facet of this assemblage -- Olsson has openly said that he does not consider it a documentary -- is that modern artists who were obviously, deeply influenced by these figures, organizations, and movements (Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu, and ?uestlove, amongst others) offer a sort of commentary track to the footage. So, rather than allowing the audience to absorb what these great, fractious leaders and thinkers had to say in full, we are offered snippets of what they had to say and needless reminders of their prowess; we are reminded time and again that they are legendary and worth our time, only to be held at arm's length as to why and how they attained their status.
At times, it is not modern artists or current political figures who offer commentary, but rather the figures themselves, years after the incidents described and shown. One might think that this would be a perfect moment for Olsson to ground the film in some sense of personal experience, some anecdotes about how they have changed as people or about what their unique experience was during a climactic event. Sadly, this becomes just another moment for the film to pander to the audience and essentially indulge in sloganeering about how "you had to be there" or how much (little?) we've grown over the decades. As a teaching aid, Olsson's film is a well-intentioned, engaging, and informative primer, but it rushes along too often, allowing stories of smaller, less bombastic figures in the struggle to slip through its fingers. If The Black Power Mixtape were to be shown on rainy afternoons in high schools and colleges throughout the country, I would be perfectly happy, impressed even, but I'm not sure if that's exactly a compliment.
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