It’s my first evening at my third BFI London Film Festival, and although it’s actually the third night of this year’s event, I get the feeling that most people milling around the BFI Southbank (some still call it the National Film Theatre) are paying their first visit, as the atmosphere of opening night expectation still lingers. Out to prove that not all corporate sponsorship of such events is agreed entirely for the purpose of pissing me off are some nice young people representing a well-known brand of blended Irish whiskey. Thanks to them, I take my seat in the ever-magnificent NFT1 having been furnished with a complimentary drink. May the festivities continue in this manner.
My first appointment of LFF 2011 is with The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975. This absorbing and unusual documentary presents collated footage shot mostly but not entirely in America over an 8-year period which comprises the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement and the years of change in political agenda that followed. What makes it unusual is that the filmmakers, past and present, are Swedish. Director Goran Olsson chanced upon some left over films made by Swedish news reporters frequently visiting America during the period, and decided what he found was so extraordinary that the world needed to see it. The evidence certainly supports such a claim; most of the material is obviously priceless, and many of the most important figures of the era make significant appearances.
The earliest footage seen besides that of the news crew arriving in Florida as if on a beach holiday is, appropriately, of Martin Luther King Jr conducting some of his final engagements. The director contextually adds a speech by Malcolm X, by this time deceased, simply to demonstrate how their conflicting viewpoints helped shape the different strands of activism which were to follow their deaths, and are to feature in the rest of the film. The footage is mostly made up of interviews, many with some of the leading players in the era of radicalism and “Black Power” that arose as a progression of, and in some cases opposition to, the mainstream Civil Rights Movement.
All the material is presented without conventional analysis; what we do get is a series of present-day interviews which serve as a commentary on the general events, whilst not addressing the footage specifically. The technique works very well, particularly as an antidote to the arguably worn-out ‘talking heads’ method of voicing the pictures. It also helps that the choice of interviewees is excellent, including two people who feature heavily in the archive films, Angela Davis and Bobby Seale, plus hugely insightful contributions from Harry Belafonte, Erykah Badu, and Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson.
The lack of opinion emanating from the creators is a refreshing element of the film; the director makes a sound call in trusting his audience to draw their own conclusions about who the heroes and villains are. For example, similar time is given to lengthy interviews with Davis and Louis Farrakhan, and no commentator suddenly appears to ferociously endorse or oppose either’s views. The Davis interview is actually the film’s centrepiece; filmed whilst she was incarcerated awaiting trial in 1971, it’s a profoundly intense exchange, and Davis’s words are an astonishingly calm and sympathetic acknowledgement of her fury at the injustice she is enduring, and its symbolic nature in the context of wider events.
Other highlights are some wonderful captures of Stokely Carmichael, including an ‘at home’ piece where he actually takes over an interview with his mother about the family’s struggle and mercilessly drags the truth out of her about the prejudice faced by his father; and a memorable interview with the world’s most righteous bookshop owner, which actually draws a hearty round of applause from the audience in the middle of the film.
It’s important to clarify that this is not intended to be a historically informative piece, and in no way does it serve as a Swedish perspective on the events. More than anything else, it’s a metaphorical sigh of relief that such a collection somehow escaped the can. Seen as a whole it’s a triumph, chiefly because the filmmaker has been honest enough not to try and turn this treasure trove into anything other than the sum of its parts. This point could easily be missed though; so emotive is the subject matter that it becomes easy to convince oneself that the film is at fault if something is not adequately explained, or an obvious gap appears in the timeline.
This confusion is certainly in evidence in the post-screening Q&A, when the director receives some rather unjust criticism. I have a theory about cinema Q&A’s, which is that crap questions are asked because the good ones are too busy being thought through. Unfortunately this thinking time allows idiots to get their hands up first. One lady admonishes Olson for giving Farrakhan more time than Malcolm X, which forces the embarrassed director into explaining when the demise of “Mr X” took place. Thankfully, Olson is humorous, insightful, and self-deprecating; he responds to one critic with “hey, I’m obviously a lousy filmmaker”. It’s clear by now that this is palpably untrue.
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