Black Panthers - Black is Honest and Beautiful...

I hadn't seen any of Agnes Varda's films until I caught The Gleaners and I a few months ago at a film festival. I loved it, mainly because of Varda's extremely personal aproach to some interesting material and questions. I was recently doing some research on sixties activism when I stumbled across Black Panthers, Varda's 1968 documentary about the Black Panther Party.

The 30 minute long film looks at a rally to free the party's leader, Huey P. Newton. There's no pretense of objectivity -- the Black Panther Party shared in the copyright. Speakers at the rally included Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown, and there's also a short interview with Newton, in prison. Other segments include white people at a firing rage (some of which are children), and members of the police department explaining the gear they carry in the trunks of their cars.

This film documents some of the most important and controverial black leaders of the late 60s, and is a must see for anyone interested in sixties radicalism ot the Panthers.

Bless Agnès Varda for making this short documentary, and for the most part simply allowing members of the Black Panthers to state their views and explain the motivation behind the Black Power movement. The issues are the same as those faced today by the community, and it certainly resonates to hear them speak of stopping the police from killing black people, or of incarceration as being stilted against minorities. The film was made around the time of the Huey Newton trial, and after governor Ronald Reagan had hypocritically overturned California's open carry law once black people started taking advantage of it. Mostly it consists of footage of people at rallies to "Free Huey!," interviews with leaders like Newton and Stokely Carmichael, and comments from supporters. It also includes great commentary from Kathleen Cleaver explaining the significance of black women wearing their hair naturally, in afros.

The film is a snapshot in time during the summer of 1968 which made it fascinating to me, but I wish it had been longer and more fleshed out. It probably should have also asked a critical question or two about the movement looking to Mao Zedong as a role model, given the brutality of his regime and the millions he killed. On the other hand, millions of black people had (and have) died in the system they were in with its widespread racism, so one can understand searching for an alternative, and becoming as assertive as they did when progress didn't just gradually happen. I loved how Varda provided a few moments of gentle narration, explaining to audiences the reasons for what seemed like a dangerous and possibly violent movement. This is well worth a half hour, and something to reflect on over half a century later.

I've been deeply impressed by earlier work by Varda; when this happens with me the filmmaker's whole journey becomes a lifelong project. I have several of these running, open-ended affairs with creative, alert souls who I know I can always turn to for a far- reaching view.

This is a small snapshot, but no less part of the journey. It's among a few political films she did at the same time as Godard and others, with Vietnam booming in the distance.

It's a look at a rally party of the Black Panthers at the time of Huey Newton's trial for the murder of a policeman, but there's nothing more they can offer Varda's camera than sloganeering and Varda had no more time to devote into it, perhaps not the inclination to probe more and inquire. Possibly she was interested in no more than this glimpse in passing.

It says something that she was there of course, yet she also makes it a point to ask some of the rapt faces if they know Huey didn't do it; they don't, but they're fervent just the same, it's all part of a war being waged on them, Huey is a prisoner of that war, he must go free, or else.

There's a much more sobering history prior to and as we move away from that day, based on what little I know; the obsession with territory and tribal law, and on the other hand police abuse and a youthful life without prospects that would turn Southcentral LA into Beirut, but you have to remind yourself that this is all simmering behind the ideology and parades, the image barely able to contain a life that would soon spill from it.

Politics are thin, but maybe it is all here anyway for you to deepen? Politics aside, the glimpse is worthwhile. It's a day in that life, that place, that furor about injustice.

While Agnes Varda was in California shooting "Uncle Yanco", she made this short documentary about a rally to free Huey Newton after he had been jailed, as the documentary tells us, a shoot-out with the police that ended with ten people injured and one cop dead.

Mme. Varda shoots and edits this as an anthropological study, with only Back people speaking; indeed, you have to look carefully to spot a Caucasian in the background. Having grown up in this era, I note that it's a useful corrective to the usual coverage of events like this, in which one heard White people talking about the racial divide and how to deal with it.

While her husband Jacques Demy was in L. A. filming MODEL SHOP (1969), Agnes Varda was in Oakland Directing this Documentary short centered on the protests trying to free Black Panther leader Huey Newton (who is interviewed in prison). The resulting film is an interesting 'you are there' look at the group.

Varda and her team got incredible access to document the group (and not just their protests). Members speak directly to the camera and without filter. There is no question that Varda's sympathies lie with the Panthers. An unidentified American woman narrates (surprising that her name has never been revealed). It's simple and straightforward, but, always tilted in favor of the group.

Originally, this was supposed to air on French TV, but, the government got cold feet over the incendiary image of the Panthers and didn't broadcast it. The short has been beautifully restored and looks and sounds fantastic. The 16mm footage retains it's verite feel, but, the restoration is so fine one swears it could be 35mm.

Streaming on Criterion and other outlets; Also available on DVD.