John Eldridge

Trailer for the documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Angela Davis afro hairstyle and Afro-American sprinters Tommie Smith John Carlos black-gloved raised fists at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico are two of the most iconic images of the Black Power movement. In his film, director G ran Hugo Olsson follows the movement s development and its legacy. Hitherto unpublished documentary material from Swedish television and interviews with the protagonists then and now provide a fresh insight into the history and significance of the Civil Rights Movement. The film contains interviews with, among others, civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael, who co-wrote the 1967 bestselling book, Black Power. The politics of liberation in America ; Black Panther founders Bobby Seal and Huey P. Newton; Black Power activists Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver, as well as documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio. Deeply affected by the Vietnam War, Swedish society s interest in the African-American liberation movement reached its peak at the end of the 1970s. Fuelled by a mixture of empathy and naivety, Swedish documentary filmmakers travelled to the USA to experience at first hand the Black Power movement which the US media had stylised as a terrorist organisation. The previously unpublished archive footage contained in this film enables a younger generation to acquaint themselves with the Black Power movement and it s universal impact.