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It’s an afternoon in July 2023, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams is in his element. Standing at a podium at the foot of the marble staircase in New York’s City Hall, the Mayor is flanked by staffers, supporters, and hip-hop stars including Eric B. (of Eric B. and Rakim fame), rapper and reality TV star Peter Gunz, and “The Blastmaster” Krs-One. The occasion is the announcement of a series of concerts to celebrate hip-hop’s 50th anniversary across New York’s five boroughs. Aiming to look the part of “Hip-Hop Mayor,...

Exclusive: Tenderfoot TV, the podcast company behind series such as To Live and Die in LA and Up and Vanished, and Campside Media, the company behind the Chameleon podcast franchise, have closed a multi-show deal and announced their first slate. Their first two series, Radical and Cop City, are focused on stories from Atlanta, Ga, and intersect social justice, true crime and journalism.

Investigative documentary podcast Radical, distributed by iHeartPodcasts, premieres December 5. It tells the story of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a Muslim leader who was convicted of shooting two sheriff’s deputies — one fatally —in 2000, outside a mosque in one of Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods. Prior to converting to Islam, Al-Amin was known as the Black Power activist H. Rap Brown, and was one of the most polarizing figures of the movement, gaining a reputation as a charismatic orator and passionate revolutionary. H. Rap Brown was an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party,...

British filmmaker Horace Ové, known for his groundbreaking work, passed away at 86. His film "Pressure" explored themes of identity and racism. Ové, born in Trinidad, documented London's counterculture and Black Power movement, capturing influential figures such as James Baldwin. Ové's legacy has influenced Black British cinema, and a documentary on his life and works will be released in November.

It was announced yesterday that British filmmaker Horace Ové, best known for being the first British filmmaker of African descent to direct a feature-length film in the UK, has sadly passed away at the age of 86. Zak Ové, one of Ové’s children, announced his father's death on Facebook (via Variety).

"Our loving father Horace, took his last breath at 4.30 this morning, while sleeping peacefully. I hope his spirit is free now after many years of suffering with Alzheimer’s. You are forever missed, and forever loved. Rest in Peace Pops,...

Director Horace Ové, who directed “Pressure” — the first full-length Black British movie — has died at the age of 86. His death was confirmed by his son, Zak, who wrote on Facebook Saturday, “Our loving father Horace, took his last breath at 4.30 this morning, while sleeping peacefully.”

He continued, “I hope his spirit is free now after many years of suffering with Alzheimer’s. You are forever missed, and forever loved. Rest in Peace Pops, and thank you for everything.”

Ové was born in Trinidad and moved to London in 1960. He also spent time living in Rome, where he worked as an extra before returning to the United Kingdom in 1965. As a photographer, he captured portraits of some of the foremost leaders of the British Black Power movement, including Michael X, Darcus Howe and Stokely Carmichael.

His transition into filmmaking happened at the same time, first with the short “The Art of...

Horace Ové, director of “Pressure” (1976), the first full-length Black British film, died on Sept. 16. He was 86.

Ové’s son Zak posted on Facebook: “Our loving father Horace, took his last breath at 4.30 this morning, while sleeping peacefully. I hope his spirit is free now after many years of suffering with Alzheimer’s. You are forever missed, and forever loved. Rest in Peace Pops, and thank you for everything.”

Born in Trinidad in 1936, Ové’s moved to London in 1960 to study interior design. A stint in Rome, during which he worked as a film extra including on Joseph Mankiewicz’s “Cleopatra” (1963), he was exposed to the work of Federico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica, who would become infuences. He returned to Britain in 1965 and covered social and political events in the country while being a student at the London Film School. During the 1960s and 1970s he was one of the...

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A suspicious pattern emerges when Election Day nears in the United States. Leaders of the competing political parties begin a begging campaign, urging Black voters to head to the polls and cast their ballots for candidates often largely uninterested in their needs. These officials appeal to the morality of the historically disenfranchised masses, insisting that a nation that does not normally care about them can’t save itself without their votes. The disingenuous performance drains the sincerity from efforts to get out the vote, makes it too easy to take for granted the long, winding history of the Black suffrage movement and obfuscates existing barriers to real freedom.

Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, a powerful and intimate new documentary by Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI) and Geeta Gandbhir (I Am Evidence), is a timely reminder of the legacy of voting rights in the U.

The documentary “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power,” which charts efforts to organize disenfranchised Black voters in rural Alabama in 1965 in the wake of the Selma to Montgomery marches, bears tremendous resonance today.

Many fraught topics that have made headlines within the past two years — voter suppression, election fraud, police brutality, Black Lives Matter, gun control, to name a few — all seem like manifestations of issues more than a half-century old.

In 1965, Lowndes County, Alabama, was one of the poorest counties in the country. It had no registered Black voters despite an overall population that was 80 Black. Sharecropping had replaced slavery as a means to maintain the caste system, and cotton pickers had little hope of getting themselves out of debt. Registering to vote was unthinkable even after passage of the Voting Rights Act, as Blacks were routinely followed, intimidated, threatened or even killed if whites perceived them to be out of line.

Rex Miller was alway meant to make “Citizen Ashe,” the new documentary he co-directed with Sam Pollard about Arthur Ashe, the groundbreaking tennis legend who found his own way to becoming a leading activist. “I’d say this is part of my whole lifelong tennis journey as I grew up a tennis player, had tennis fanatic parents. And my first glimpse of Arthur Ashe — I was 6 years old and I was at the match in 1968 when he won the U.S. Open. And I used to try to play like him as well as the other greats, Stan Smith and Jimmy Connors, all those guys,” Miller tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above).

Miller, who helmed the 2015 doc “Althea” about Althea Gibson, the first African-American tennis player to win a Grand Slam title, started work on “Citizen Ashe” five years ago after the daughter of a “Life” magazine photographer reached out to him.

Arthur Ashe is an icon in the tennis world, breaking barriers to become the first Black male champion of three Grand Slams: the Australian Open; the U.S. Open; and, most famously, beating Jimmy Conners in 1975 to win Wimbledon. But on the other side of the net is Ashe’s work as an activist, which becomes the focus of CNN Films’ documentary Citizen Ashe.

Director-producer Rex Miller, whose previous tennis documentaries includes one on pioneer Althea Gibson, and Sam Pollard, who most recently made MLK/FBI, teamed for the feature docu, which they spoke about during a panel at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary awards-season event.

Miller said “the skeleton” of Citizen Ashe came from 47 boxes of notes and Dictaphone tapes he uncovered at Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, home to Ashe’s archives. The materials had been used as the basis for Ashe’s memoir Days of Grace,...

Director Steve McQueen is looking to follow up his five-film anthology series, Small Axe, with a new series of documentaries focusing on some of the most pivotal moments of Black British history. The 12 Years a Slave helmer released Small Axe last year, which comprised of a quintet of stories set in London between the 1960s and 1980s and told the stories of different West Indian immigrants living there. The new documentaries will take a closer look at the themes and events that feature in the Small Axe films, and will be released on Amazon Prime in September.

The three documentary movies have all received an individual synopsis. The first of the trio of features is Uprising, and rather than being one movie it is made up of three episodes lasting one hour each, which combine to tell the story of the racial issues that were faced in the early 1980s in the UK.

September is shaping up to be a great month for fans of Steve McQueen. Amazon announced on Monday that three of the Academy Award-winning filmmaker’s new documentaries will premiere on the Prime Video streaming service in September. McQueen co-directed one of the three films and produced each one.

All three documentaries — “Uprising,” “Black Power: A British Story of Resistance,” and “Subnormal: A British Scandal” — explore key themes and events depicted in McQueen’s award-winning “Small Axe“ anthology, which is currently streaming on Prime Video. Each documentary features first-hand interviews with key participants in the events, many of whom are telling their stories for the first time. McQueen is an executive producer on all three documentaries alongside James Rogan, Tracey Scoffield, and Soleta Rogan. The documentaries will premiere on September 17.

Per Amazon, “Uprising” is a vivid and visceral three-part documentary series (comprised of three hour-long episodes) examining three events from...

Steve McQueen will premiere three new documentaries — “Uprising,” “Black Power: A British Story of Resistance” and “Subnormal: A British Scandal” — on Amazon Prime Video on Sept. 17.

Directed by McQueen and James Rogan, “Uprising” is a three-part docuseries that examines three events from 1981 in the U.K. — The New Cross Fire, which killed 13 Black youths; the Black People’s Day of Action, which saw over 20,000 join the first organized mass protest of Black British people; and the Brixton riots, a series of clashes between Black youths and the Metropolitan Police. “Uprising” will explore how these events are intertwined and how they defined race relations for a generation.

Helmed by George Amponsah, “Black Power: A British Story of Resistance” tells the story of the Black Power movement in Britain. Featuring rare archival footage of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael’s activities in the U.K. — along with footage...

The two leading characters of Amazon Prime Video’s “The Underground Railroad,” portrayed exquisitely by Joel Edgerton and breakout sensation Thuso Mbedu, are undeniably complex. Their performances are heightened by the work of the supporting players around them, particularly William Jackson Harper and newcomer Chase W. Dillon. Adding layers to Barry Jenkins’ visceral and ingenious series, they showcase the narrative strands often overlooked in large, sprawling epics. When Cora (Mbedu) is utterly grief-stricken following a particular loss in “Chapter 9: Indiana Winter” or when Ridgeway (Edgerton) is freed in “Chapter 6: Tennessee – Proverbs,” Dillon and Harper help underscore the emotional impact.

With only six available slots in the supporting actor in a limited series category and an embarrassment of riches among contenders, Dillon and Harper are two of many in the hunt for Emmy attention.

Harper, who was nominated for a supporting actor in a comedy Emmy last year for...

Without question, Muhammad Ali (who died on June 3rd, 2016) transformed the world of sports. Winning the heavyweight title three times — beginning with his shocking upset of Sonny Liston in 1964, which made him the youngest boxer to unseat an incumbent heavyweight champion — Ali is considered, alongside Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, one of the best boxers ever to enter a ring. Though his pugilistic style was unorthodox and an affront to boxing purists at the time, his dazzling combination of speed and power revolutionized the sport, and most boxing observers...

The Sundance Film Festival has always been one of the premiere places for discovery, providing a launching pad for breakout films en route to mainstream acclaim and awards. But oftentimes, the best of Sundance — films that are truly original, fresh, and worthy — go on to smaller victory laps. These are the festival’s hidden gems, and though they might not be getting Oscar nods, they’re just as deserving of our attention. In advance of this year’s virtual fest, we’ve partnered with AMC+ to assemble a varied list of past Sundance stunners. Featuring early films from the likes of Miranda July and the Safdie’s to Spike Lee’s adaptation of a hit Broadway musical, all of these gems are available via AMC+ streaming platform.

“Daddy Longlegs”

The brothers Safdie are, by now, an indie household name — but a decade ago, they burst onto the map with this captivating dramedy.

Steve McQueen, currently riding a wave of global acclaim for his BBC/Amazon anthology “Small Axe,” will executive produce two Black-themed documentaries for the BBC.

“Black Power,” which originated from an idea McQueen had while filming “Small Axe,” will examine how the Black Power movement came into being in the late 1960s and fought back against police brutality and racism.

The films features rare archive of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael’s activities in Britain, as well as footage of leading figures in the movement in the U.K., Altheia Jones-LeCointe, Darcus Howe and Roy Sawh. They shed fresh light on the stories of Black youth in the ’60s and ’70s who challenged the British establishment and helped to shape a new political and cultural landscape in the U.K.

BAFTA-nominated George Amponsah will direct the documentary, which will play on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.

“Subnormal,...

Steve McQueen is to executive produce two documentaries for the BBC that were conceived while shooting Small Axe. One will examine Black power in Britain, while the second film investigates how Black children in the 1960s and 1970s were disproportionately sent to schools for the so-called “educationally subnormal.”

Black Power (working title) is directed by BAFTA-nominated George Amponsah (Hard Stop) and looks at how the movement came into being in the late 1960s, when it fought back against police brutality and racism. The film will include rare footage of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael’s activities in Britain, as well as footage of leading figures in the movement in the UK, including Altheia Jones-LeCointe, Darcus Howe, and Roy Sawh.

Subnormal is helmed by new talent Lyttanya Shannon. It tells the story of the UK schools scandal through the eyes of Black parents, teachers, and activists who banded...

The first episode of Steve McQueen's anthology film series Small Axe officially premiered on Nov. 20, and we're already enthralled. The series is a collection of five original movies that explore the Black experience in the United Kingdom from the 1960s through the 1980s. The debut film, titled Mangrove, details the trial of nine Black activists who were charged with inciting riots in 1970. The accusation occurred after they protested police harassment of customers at The Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill where Black intellectuals and creatives often socialized.

One of the key figures and defendants in the trial was Darcus Howe (played by Malachi Kirby), who chose to represent himself. Born Leighton Rhett Radford Howe, the Trinidad native moved to London at the age of 18 after attending Queen's Royal College with the intent to become a lawyer. However, after experiencing racism in Britain in the early 1960s, he moved...

John Lewis declares that, during the 1960s, he was arrested “a few times.” Then the elder statesman and éminence grise of the civil rights movement pauses before correcting himself in front of the large Dallas crowd he’s addressing: “40 times…and since I’ve been in Congress, another five times. I’m probably gonna get arrested again for something.” If it was any other person over the age of 75 saying this in a public forum (with the exception of Jane Fonda), you might think this was stump-speech bluster. Lewis isn’t exaggerating,...

If America had its own path to sainthood, John Lewis would have made it there long ago. The 80-year-old Civil Rights icon and congressman has navigated decisive American moments with superhuman finesse, making him a natural cinematic character. Dawn Porter’s absorbing documentary “John Lewis: Good Trouble” doesn’t try any fancy trickery to energize that saga, instead deriving its appeal from the sheer resilience of the change agent at its center. As with 2018’s Ruth Bader Ginsberg documentary “Rgb,” Porter offers a closeup look at a historic figure somehow still in the game decades down the line, and seemingly too good for this world. “As long as I have breath in my body,” Lewis says to the camera, “I’ll do what I can.”

At a more stable moment for American society, “Good Trouble” might not register as much more than a hagiographic celebration. Yet context is everything: Premiering in Tulsa,...

If America had its own path to sainthood, John Lewis would have made it there long ago. The 80-year-old Civil Rights icon and congressman has navigated decisive American moments with superhuman finesse, making him a natural cinematic character. Dawn Porter’s absorbing documentary “John Lewis: Good Trouble” doesn’t try any fancy trickery to energize that saga, instead deriving its appeal from the sheer resilience of the change agent at its center. As with 2018’s Ruth Bader Ginsberg documentary “Rgb,” Porter offers a closeup look at a historic figure somehow still in the game decades down the line, and seemingly too good for this world. “As long as I have breath in my body,” Lewis says to the camera, “I’ll do what I can.”

At a more stable moment for American society, “Good Trouble” might not register as much more than a hagiographic celebration. Yet context is everything: Premiering in Tulsa,...

At the end of a recent appearance of The Late Show, host Stephen Colbert asked his guest, Run the Jewels rapper Killer Mike, what white people could do to be better allies in what has become a serious moment of reckoning in our country. The artist’s answer: go watch the work of Jane Elliott, an educator who’s been conducting classroom experiments involving race, role play and the pain of exclusion since the Sixties. We have no idea how many people took his advice and sought out the Frontline...

Agnes Varda is most celebrated as the lovable storyteller of “Faces/Places” and the New Wave auteur behind “Cleo from 5 to 7,” but in 1968, her career took a detour. While husband Jacques Demy was shooting “Model Shop” in Los Angeles, Varda hung around the Bay Area to make two half-hour documentaries about the Black Panther Party and its efforts to free Huey P. Newton from prison.

“Huey” provides a dramatic collection of footage surrounding the campaign to free Newton after he was jailed for allegedly shooting police office James Frey. However, “Black Panthers” digs deeper into the circumstances surrounding the rallies to explore the nature of the Black Panther Party itself.

The result is a sobering account of the group’s activist intent, delivered almost entirely in its own words. Beyond the striking contrast to the vilification of the Black Panther Party in American media at the time, Varda’s absorbing...

Robert Schenkkan’s Broadway-bound The Great Society, his second Lbj play following the celebrated All The Way, has completed casting and set an opening night for Tuesday, October 1 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.

Joining the previously announced Brian Cox (as Lyndon B. Johnson) will be Marchánt Davis as Stokely Carmichael, Brian Dykstra as Adam Walinsky, Barbara Garrick as Lady Bird Johnson, David Garrison as Richard Nixon, Ty Jones as Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Christopher Livingston as James Bevel, Angela Pierce as Pat Nixon, Matthew Rauch as Robert McNamara, Nikkole Salter as Coretta Scott King and Tramell Tillman as Bob Moses.

Previews begin on the previously announced Friday, September 6 for a strictly limited 12-week engagement.

The newcomers join the previously announced Cox, Grantham Coleman as Martin Luther King Jr., Marc Kudisch as Richard J. Daley, Bryce Pinkham as Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Frank Wood as Senator Everett Dirksen, Gordon Clapp as J. Edgar Hoover,...

When We Were Kings, the Oscar-winning documentary about Muhammed Ali and George Foreman’s legendary “Rumble in the Jungle,” is being adapted into a Broadway musical.

Held in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1974, the Rumble in the Jungle remains one of the most famous boxing bouts of all time with Ali knocking out Foreman, who was up until then the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Leon Gast directed When We Were Kings, which was released in 1996 and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

When We Were Kings...

The legendary “rumble in the jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire, Africa brings to mind images of two bloodied fighters pushing themselves beyond the limits of endurance. However, the boxing match does not exactly scream musical.

That’s not stopping one producer, David Sonenberg, from trying to put the swing into the sweet science. He is planning to make a musical version of his Academy Award-winning film “When We Were Kings,” a 1996 documentary that captured the ringside drama. The book for the musical will be adapted from the film and written by Shelley Marcus, and the songs will be fR&B classics from the 1974 Zaire music festival. The soundtrack will also include “Rumble In The Jungle”, which was written by The Fugees for the film. A workshop is scheduled for the spring of 2019 with plans for a full stage musical production the following year.

“Muhammad Ali was...

Could Muhammad Ali be headed to Broadway? Producer David Sonenberg is developing a musical stage adaptation of the 1996, Oscar-winning documentary “When We Were Kings,” it was announced Thursday.

“When We Were Kings” documents the legendary 1974 fight between Ali and George Foreman, better known as “The Rumble in the Jungle,” that was held in Zaire, Africa. Sonenberg, who executive produced the documentary directed by Leon Gast, is now bringing it to the stage with a workshop scheduled for spring 2019 and plans for a full stage musical production the following year.

The book for the musical is adapted from the film and is written by Shelley Marcus. The songs for the musical are R&B classics from the 1974 Zaire music festival, with the exception of “Rumble In The Jungle,” which was written by The Fugees for the film.

Also Read: CBS All Access Nabs Muhammad Ali Limited Series From Morgan Freeman

The...

Spike Lee, who co-wrote and directed Focus Features’ “BlacKkKlansman,” says it was not an easy movie to make, but that everybody worked together. “We were all making the same film,” he explains, “which doesn’t always happen.”

The fact-based story centers on Ron Stallworth, a black cop who went undercover in Colorado Springs in the 1970s to expose local Ku Klux Klan activities. Lee pays tribute to some of his below-the-line colleagues as well as to such respected performers as Harry Belafonte, who co-stars in the film.

Barry Alexander Brown, Editor

“He’s cut almost everything for me; we go way, way back. For the sequence involving Mr. Belafonte, who brings such weight and gravitas — he was in the trenches with Dr. King — Kevin [Willmott, a co-writer] and I wanted him to talk about a real-life incident of lynching, which is the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan. There was an incident in Waco,...

[This story contains spoilers for BlacKkKlansman.]

The following is part of a monthly conversation series between The Hollywood Reporter contributors Simon Abrams and Steven Boone. This month, they tackled BlacKkKlansman, director Spike Lee's fictionalized account of African-American undercover cop Ron Stallworth's investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. In the film, Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrates the Klan with the help of Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a Caucasian Jewish-American police officer, and Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), a student activist that Stallworth meets while attending a Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture lecture. There are spoilers ahead. 

Simon Abrams, Getting Off the Bus: BlacKkKlansman ...

[This story contains spoilers for BlacKkKlansman.]

The following is part of a monthly conversation series between The Hollywood Reporter contributors Simon Abrams and Steven Boone. This month, they tackled BlacKkKlansman, director Spike Lee's fictionalized account of African-American undercover cop Ron Stallworth's investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. In the film, Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrates the Klan with the help of Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a Caucasian Jewish-American police officer, and Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), a student activist that Stallworth meets while attending a Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture lecture. There are spoilers ahead. 

Simon Abrams, Getting Off the Bus: BlacKkKlansman ...

Angela Davis isn’t a character in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” but her name rings out proudly. The scholar and revolutionary’s imprisonment lingers in the background of the film, and Black Student Union president Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) even sports a “Free Angela” button.

Recently, we made the case on the “Shoot This Now” podcast that someone should make a feature film about Davis. You can listen on Apple or right here.



Davis is one of the heroes of the student activists portrayed in “BlacKkKlansman,” along with Kwame Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael. Ture is played charismatically by Corey Hawkins, but Davis doesn’t show up — in part because she was imprisoned at the start of 1972, the year when most of “BlacKkKlansman” takes place.

Also Read: 'BlacKkKlansman' Fact-Check: Spike Lee's Film Stays Close to the 'Crazy, Outrageous, Incredible True Story'

(Warning: There are a few plot details about “BlacKkKlansman” below,...

“BlacKkKlansman,” which premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival, is quintessential Spike Lee, impassioned and messy and vital as anything he’s done in decades.

It’s also far more accomplished a piece of filmmaking than many of Lee’s recent narrative films. Let’s face it, the director of “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Malcolm X” has long been an iconic director, educator and activist, but films like “Red Hook Summer,” “Miracle at St. Anna,” “Oldboy” and even the spirited but uneven “Chi-Raq” just didn’t have the impact or the quality of his earlier films.

His television documentaries, including “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” and “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise,” have fared better.

Also Read: 'Dog Days' Film Review: Intertwined Lives of Owners and Pets Makes for Obediently Heartwarming Comedy

But...

Heads up: Spike Lee is coming at you with his greatest and most galvanizing movie in years. BlacKkKlansman is right up there with Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X in the Spike’s Joint pantheon of game-changers. For starters, it gets your blood up about the toxic and enduring power of racism. Based on the true story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first African-American cop on the Colorado Springs police force, the film shows how Ron managed to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and righteously screw with it from the inside.

In the movie BlacKkKlansman, director Spike Lee vividly unfolds the story of a Kkk infiltration by a black undercover police officer. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the detective, responds to an ad recruiting members to a new chapter of the Kkk in Colorado Springs, Co. Maintaining a phone correspondence with the organization, he recruits Jewish officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), who stands in for him during Klan meetings. The movie's wild synopsis might seem like a fictional high-concept project like Sorry to Bother You or Get Out, but it actually happened. The events that Lee follows are based on the ones that the real Stallworth documents in his 2014 memoir Black Klansman.

In the early '70s, Stallworth became the first black detective in Colorado Springs. On his first assignment as an undercover officer, he observed Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael speaking at a black nightclub. The officer recalled feeling caught up in Carmichael's speech,...

By Peter BelsitoThere were three Sundance films thus year that brought me back to my youthful days of activism, anti war protests and civil rights rallies.‘King in the Wilderness’ is about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last years when the movement he led changed, when the country and the black population changed — very radically.

The film about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last three years is mostly told with film interviews with his surviving colleagues who were with him then. This is an interesting, and I think, successful approach when mixed with the contemporary news footage.

This one was about civil rights mostly but also focused on his political activities where, in his final days, he was drawn to anti-war and black power activities while trying to keep up with a changing scene in the country.

I remember when we activists no longer looked to him for...

Corey Hawkins is the latest to join Spike Lee's and Jordan Peele's Black Klansman.

The Kong: Skull Island actor will appear alongside Adam Driver and John David Washington in the movie that tells the true story of a black detective in Colorado Springs, Ron Stallworth, who in 1978 joined the local chapter of his Klan, going undercover to gather intelligence on the hate group. 

Hawkins will play civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame) in the crime thriller that also stars Spider-Man: Homecoming actress Laura Harrier. 

Lee will direct from a script he co-wrote with Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, and Kevin Willmott.

Peele...

Syria’s first ever submission in the Motion Picture Academy’s Foreign Language category, “Little Gandhi”, is one of a handful of documentaries submitted for Best Foreign Language Film nomination this year.

It comes to the Academy in a most unusual way. It was selected not by the country which is how submissions are always made, but by a committee of artists in exile. If any of these people had actually been in Syria they would likely have been imprisoned, tortured and executed, for this was the fate of Ghiyath Matar, the Syrian activist who became known for giving flowers and roses to army soldiers in his home town of Daraya, leader of the once peaceful Syrian revolution and the Little Gandhi of the title. It premiered at the ongoing Asian World Film Festival.

I have yet to see the documentary submission for Academy Award® nomination entitled Syria Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of Isis...

When Muhammad Ali passed away on June 4th, 2016, those who knew him, admired him, fought him and loved him attested to his singular skill as a boxer, his fleet footwork and his way with words (especially of the trash-talking variety). What was often emphasized the most in these tributes, however, was how Ali was as much a political firebrand as a gamechanging pugilist – both the 20th century's consummate athlete and a social activist willing to sacrifice his career by standing up for what he believed. This was the heavyweight champion...

Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival , (December 3-6, 2015 in Sag Harbor, N.Y.) will honor the MacArthur Genius Award winning Director-Producer-Writer Stanley Nelson with a Career Achievement Award at its Gala on December 5. Previous honorees are Richard Leacock (2011), Susan Lacy (2012), Da Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (2013), Barbara Kopple (2014)

“ It is a great privilege to present our 2015 Career Achievement Award to Stanley Nelson. His award-winning documentary films on social justice issues were early windows into race relations. His latest film, “The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution” continues the provocative dialogue, even more relevant in America today. We honor his commitment to honesty, truth and artistic rigor.” -Jacqui Lofaro, Founder and Executive Director, Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival

Stanley Nelson is the co-founder and Executive Director of Firelight Films and co-founder of Firelight Media, which provides grants and technical support to emerging documentarians. Firelight is one of nine nonprofit organizations around the world to receive the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. The Award, recognizes exceptional nonprofit organizations which have demonstrated creativity and impact, and invests in their long-term sustainability with sizable one-time grants.

With 35 films and multiple industry awards to his credit, Nelson is acknowledged as one of the premier documentary filmmakers working today. He has a clear, vibrant and consistent voice, creating evocative films which document issues of social injustice. His films have earned five Primetime Emmys, two awards from the Sundance Film Festival, and two Peabodys, among other honors. With a dogged insistence on finding new voices and new witnesses, Nelson has illuminated stories that we thought we knew, particularly about the African-American experience. Aside from being a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, he is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the Neh National Medal in the Humanities presented by President Obama in 2014.

I had an opportunity to speak with Stanley recently concerning the announcement of his Career Achievement Award from the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival (HT2FF).

You have won so many prizes, what does it mean to you to receive the Career Achievement Award from the HT2FF?

It is always great to receive accolades; it doesn’t get old. Documentary filmmakers don’t get recognition every day. It’s not like we go to a restaurant and everyone falls all over us. To be recognized because people are seeing and liking my films is great and the award means this is happening.

In addition to receiving the MacArthur Genius Award, your company, Firelight Media, won the 2015 MacArthur Award. How has that helped you?

My personal award sent my three kids to school and sustained me as a filmmaker. The Award to Firelight Media will help sustain the Lab mentoring filmmakers of color making their first and second films. One of the things that is essential to me as a filmmaker is to try to give the viewer a sense of what it has meant to be black in America and consider this within our contemporary context.

Nelson has directed and produced such acclaimed work as “The Murder Of Emmett Till” an eye-opening film which reveals so much beyond what the headlines of the times told us, the public. His other stirring docs include “Freedom Riders” (his personal favorite) and “Jonestown: The Life And Death Of People’s Temple”

In 2014, “Freedom Summer” presented an astounding history of what led up to the Black Power Movement. When it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, the audience was stunned at how he put into context the 1964 voter registration drive in Mississippi, the surprising truth of the Chicago Democratic Convention and the Mississippi delegation and how the turn of events led to the Black Power Movement and to the Voting Rights Act.

The delegation never got the chance to speak from the floor. Many then said, "We can’t keep being the good soldier and following the rules when we can’t do our best." Some moved into action, some dropped out. They thought, "If we just 'show' you the wrongs, the injustice, police with dogs and fire-hoses and show you that we’re non-violent, you can’t help but support us." But the Democratic National Convention failed them, and the young had to do something new.

The last image in “Freedom Summer” you see Stokely Carmichael saying “We want Black Power”. In the opening of your most recent film, “The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution” he is also chanting “We want Black Power” which gives a continuity to the two films. Tell me a bit about what prompted you to tell this story?

I felt it was a little known story, that hadn’t been told in its entirety. In particular, I wanted to offer a unique and engaging opportunity to examine a very complex moment in time that challenges the cold, oversimplified narrative of a Panther who is prone to violence and consumed with anger. Thoroughly examining the history of the Black Panther Party allowed me to sift through the fragmented perceptions and find the core driver of the movement: the Black Panther Party emerged out of a love for their people, and a devotion to empowering them. This compelled me to communicate the story fully and accurately. And for the release in August of the film, I attended every opening in 20 cities nationwide, along with former Black Panthers, scholars and photographers.

How did you get started in filmmaking?

I thought I wanted to make fiction features but I stumbled into Bill Greaves and got into documentary filmmaking with him and never looked back.

If someone offered me a million dollars to make a fiction project I think I would. But I know how you have to jump through hoops to make a feature and that pain would be difficult. I don’t have a particular idea or a script and that is hardest part of fiction; how to get a great script, cast, funding. Docs are known at least…

What films inspired you?

“Eyes on the Prize”. It was the first time we saw a series on African Americans. It got so much attention worldwide. It opened eyes to the African American history and it was fascinating to everyone. And it inspired a whole generation of African American filmmakers.

Do you have a sense of Mission in your filmmaking?

This morning I was interviewing an assistant editor and said to him, “We are on a mission here”; getting ahead in a career is ok, but here we are on a mission.”

We have a history we’ve been fortunate to be able to tell. I see my ancestors on my shoulder saying “Don’t screw up”.

We are also on a mission to tell good stories and to entertain people. I hope our films move people to action one way or the other. Many of our films lately are about young people who are making changes.

Did your parents raise you with social awareness or activism?

They were very politically minded and we talked about politics all the time around the dinner table. We were raised to be aware. I remember when I was 15 or 16 when the Panthers started, I would come home and turn on TV and see fire-hoses and dogs attacking people. These images politicized everyone. Just like today with Black Lives Matter and the police killings, everyone has to think about what they’re seeing. In the 60s it was sustained. Viet Nam also politicized everybody. You were either going to go or you had to figure out how not to go. It affected everyone.

What do you make of the police violence against black lives today?

The blatant activities of the police that all people, black and white, are seeing and talking about is bringing awareness to the years and years of injustices. Black Lives Matters is similar to how Black Panthers began. We have to be responsible for our own communities.

Nelson is currently in production on “Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story Of Historically Black Colleges And Universities”, which is the second in a series of three films Nelson will direct as part of a new multi-platform PBS series entitled America Revisited. He is also exec producing “ Free for All: Inside the Public Library”.

For more information or to buy tickets, please go to ht2ff.com...

Stanley Nelson: Director/Producer/Writer has directed and produced such acclaimed films as “Freedom Summer” which is an astounding history of what led up to the Black Power Movement. It aired in June on PBS’s American Experience to wide acclaim. The audience at Sundance this past January was astounded at how he put into context the 1964 voter registration drive in Mississippi, the surprising truth of the Chicago Democratic Convention and the Mississippi delegation and how the undemocratic turn of events led to the Black Power Movement and to the Voting Rights Act.

“Freedom Riders” tells the story leading up to “Freedom Summer” and to quote Nelson, he thinks this is his best film. As “Freedom Summer” closes with Stokely Carmichael chanting “We Want Black Power!” so “ The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution” opens with Stokely still chanting “We Want Black Power” which creates a progressive unity between the two films.

“The Murder Of Emmett Till” was another eye-opening film which revealed so much beyond what the headlines of the times told us, the public.

“The Black Panthers” will be screened for free this weekend August 29 in Ferguson. Its theatrical release is a huge deal. Nelson has made over 35 films and this is the first with theatrical distribution. With sufficient advertising money behind it, this momentous and timely film will released Wednesday September 2 in New York’s Film Forum, September 11 at Magic Johnson’s in Harlem and then in 20 more cities including L.A.’s Landmark Nuart Theater on September 25. Nelson will go to every opening along with former panthers, scholars and photographers.

You can see the schedule and more at www.BlackPanthers.com.

“The Black Panthers” was also Nelson’s eighth film (out of 12 docs he has made) to premiere at Sundance Film Festival. Winter 2016 will see the special presentation on Independent Lens (Public TV).

Nelson says this about the Black Panthers film:

Seven years ago, I set out to tell the story of the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party, a little known history that hadn’t been told in its entirety. In particular, I wanted to offer a unique and engaging opportunity to examine a very complex moment in time that challenges the cold, oversimplified narrative of a Panther who is prone to violence and consumed with anger. Thoroughly examining the history of the Black Panther Party allowed me to sift through the fragmented perceptions and find the core driver of the movement: the Black Panther Party emerged out of a love for their people and a devotion to empowering them. This powerful display of the human spirit, rooted in heart, is what compelled me to communicate this story accurately.

It is essential to me as a filmmaker to try and give the viewer a sense of what it has meant to be black in America and consider this within our contemporary context. The legacy of the Black Panther Party had a lasting impact on the way black people think and see ourselves, and it is important that we look at and understand that. As a great lover of music, I wanted to capture this sentiment in the music we used to give audiences a sense of the time and the undercurrents of change and revolution.

I knew that archival footage would be just as important as interviews when telling this story. The Black Panther history cannot be encapsulated in sound bytes and stills; the movement continues to live and breathe in the hearts and minds of those who endured. I had to dig deeper for footage that captured an authentic portrayal of the Party and which was not distorted by mainstream media. What I found was a treasure of personal records from former members and allies across the globe. These rarely seen images became an important character in the film, telling the story of how the Black Panther Party impacted all communities. There is something incredibly powerful in seeing an array of faces - white, Asian, Latino, black, and native - together at a Black Panther Party rally calling for the reform of corrupt and unjust state institutions.

Nearly half a century later, we find our voices in a renewed chorus for justice and equality. We continue to witness a state apparatus that perpetuates a culture of fear and aggression with frequent and unwarranted displays of racial violence and oppression. As we consider the similarities between the injustices of yesterday and today, it is important to understand that the Panthers were energized largely by young people - 25 and under - who started as a small group of actively engaged individuals that collectively became an international human rights phenomenon. My hope is that the film reveals itself to be more than just thought-provoking observations of our past. The parallels between pivotal moments within the movement and events occurring in our communities today are undeniable. To better understand the Black Panther Party is to be able to better reflect on our own racial climate and collective responsibility to ensure basic rights are fulfilled, not diminished, and that voices of justice and dissent are celebrated, not silenced.

The Nation loved the film; read its review, White Hands and Black Skulls: From the Panthers to ‘Straight Outta Compton’

Read more from Shadow and Act Here and here: Here.

With numerous industry awards to his credit, Nelson is acknowledged as one of the preeminent documentary filmmakers working today. Currently he is in production on “Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story Of Historically Black Colleges And Universities”, which is the second in a series of three films Nelson will direct as part of a new multi-platform PBS series entitled America Revisited.

He is also exec producing “Free for All: Inside the Public Library”...

Mo McRae, who was recently cast to play Stokely Carmichael, opposite Bryan Cranston in "All The Way," HBO’s adaptation of the Tony-winning Robert Schenkkan play, has also now been cast as Gabourey Sidibe's love interest in Fox's hist series “Empire,” when it returns for its second season this fall. McRae's character’s name will be J-Poppa, who Variety describes as "a handsome, easygoing guy" who "develops a strong connection with Andre (Trai Byers)." McRae (who can be currently seen on TNT's "Murder in the First" with Taye Diggs) last worked with "Empire" creators and producers Lee Daniels and Danny Strong in...

Aisha Hinds ("Under The Dome"), Spencer Garrett ("Blood And Oil"), Todd Weeks ("The Maiden Heist") and Mo McRae ("Wild") have been cast opposite Bryan Cranston in HBO's film adaptation of the Tony-winning Robert Schenkkan play "All The Way".

Jay Roach helms and Steven Spielberg executive produces the film which covers Lyndon Baines Johnson (Cranston) from the moment of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and through a turbulent first year as U.S. President that included leveraging his power to pass Civil Rights legislation in Congress up to his landslide re-election victory in 1964.

Hinds will play Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party leader Fannie Lou Hamer, Garrett is labor union leader Walter Reuther, Weeks is Johnson's longtime aide Walter Jenkins, and McRae is civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael.

Melissa Leo, Anthony Mackie and Bradley Whitford also star and filming begins next month.

Source: Deadline...

Speaking at a Maryland Film Fest panel, Taylor Branch, Ta-Nehisi Coates, David Simon, and James McBride — all of whom are working on adapting Branch's America in the King Years — revealed more details behind their HBO series, as well as how the show relates to the recent Baltimore protests and larger racial issues. The miniseries will focus on Branch's third volume, At Canaan's Edge, according to The New Yorker, and will cover the period from 1965 to 1968, which saw Martin Luther King Jr. angle the civil-rights movement toward economic equality. Simon said at the event that the show will "veer away from the idea of King," and "look around the edges for the most regular people." The writers added that they are particularly excited to bring the stories of C. C. Bryant, a barber in Mississippi; Fannie Lou Hamer; Amzie Moore; Kwame Touré (formerly Stokely Carmichael); King’s adviser...

I’m pretty much out of the closet when it comes to my love of superhero comics. The appeal of the “super” part is pretty obvious (flying! telepathy! shrinking!) but I also enjoy the parts about heroes.

Recently I read two graphic novels that dealt primarily with that last, non-powered part, and it made me ponder the distinction between “someone I admire” and “someone who is a hero.” This is not going to be a tirade about how we idolize sports stars but what about the teacher at the school, buying food and pencils for her students who can’t afford them. That can be an interesting conversation to have, but it’s not what I mean.

Nbm recently published an American edition of Girl in Dior, by Annie Goetzinger. Through the eyes of fictional character Clara, a journalist who becomes a Dior model, we see the life of Christian Dior,...

+“Sometimes the class struggle is also the struggle of one image against another image, of one sound against another sound. In a film, this struggle is against images and sounds.”

- British Sounds

There was something in the air when Jean-Luc Godard took up the political banner of the late 1960s and shifted his filmmaking focus in terms of storytelling style and stories told, and in a general sense of formal reevaluation and reinvention. Always considered something of the enfant terrible of the French Nouvelle Vague, Godard was keen from the start to experiment with the conventional norms of cinematic aesthetics, from the jarring jump cuts of Breathless (1960), to the self-conscious playfulness of A Woman is a Woman (1961), to the genre deviations of Band of Outsiders (1964) and Made in USA (1966). But Godard was still, at a most basic level, operating along a fairly conventional plane of fictional cinema, one with...

“I have made a series of very bad decisions and I cannot make another one” was a line once spoken by Breaking Bad’s Walter White, but it couldn’t be less true of the actor who said it. The one and only Bryan Cranston — on an impeccable roll for the last few years — has just made his Broadway debut to ecstatic notices for his lived-in, charged Lyndon Baines Johnson in All the Way, and early pundits indicate he may be the man to beat at Tony time. (Though not so fast, he still has heavy-hitters like Denzel Washington, Michael C. Hall,...

By Mark Pinkert

Contributor

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There was an interesting phenomenon in film this year that deserves a second look: many of the most recognizably “American” films of 2013 were directed by foreigners and, of those films, two feature almost entirely foreign casts.

First, to be clear, when I say “American” films, I’m not referring to stories that simply take place here; rather, I’m looking at films that are germane to the American narrative, to our history and cultural zeitgeist–really, Americana as opposed to just American. Films like The Great Gatsby, 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyers Club and Captain Phillips–which bring to life classic American literature, histories, and recent events–are the best examples. (Gravity is a tough sell for this list, but does fit insofar as it deals with the space program, a prominent feature of 20th century, Cold War America.) The second criterion, then, is to have a foreign director,...

I was just informed that The Black Power Mixtape 1967 – 1975 - Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson's acclaimed feature documentary which provides audiences with a *remixed* look at the black liberation struggle in the United States during the years in the film's title - is coming to book format. To be published on paperback by Haymarket Books, it'll go on sale at your local or online book store, starting February 4, 2014. The book, which will also be titled The Black Power Mixtape 1967 – 1975, will include historical speeches and interviews by: Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Emile...

As the stage version of The Color Purple arrives in Britain, writer Candace Allen recalls the upset and uproar the novel caused among African Americans

The first page took your breath away: a mortified 14-year-old girl has started writing letters to God because she can tell no one else that, although "he never had a kine word to say to me", "he" [her putative daddy] has raped her and warned that she "better … git used to it". Page two, letter two: her mama dead and she "big" with her second baby. He "kilt" the first. "Kill this one, too if he can." Letter three: the letter-writer has a little sister she will protect "with God help". Letter four: sister Nettie has a friend named Mr ___. Letter seven: Mr ___ wants to marry Nettie but he carries a picture of a beautiful, worldly woman named Shug Avery in his wallet. The letter-writer is mesmerised by Shug Avery.

Introducing our look at the year that defined the modern era, the veteran writer recalls the extraordinary collision of politics, culture and social upheaval that he witnessed as a student

Was it a prefigurative year? I think so. Not that one thought of it as such at the time or even a few years later, when it was totally forgotten in the turbulence that engulfed the world. I am trying to recall that year, to find deep down some memories, even a few impressions on the basis of which I could reconstruct a misted-up past without too many distortions.

When I arrived to study at Oxford in October 1963, the bohemian style was black plastic or leather jackets for women and black leather or navy donkey jackets for men. I stuck to cavalry twills and a duffle coat, at least for a few months. The Cuban missile crisis had temporarily boosted...