The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975

B+ Documentary

• Directed by Göran Hugo Olsson

The nature of the civil rights movement changed dramatically in the mid-to-late 1960’s, abandoning non-violence and attacking the heart of the American government. This American/Swedish documentary tracks the Black Power movement from Stokely Carmichael’s 1967 heyday until heroin ravaged Harlem in 1975.

The picture starts out by explaining that the footage you’re about to see was shot by Swedish crews for Swedish television, and that it presents a  Swedish view of this American phenomenon. Yet despite the occasional use of Scandinavian narration (with English subtitles, of course, and presumably from the original broadcasts), very little feels foreign about this film.

On one hand, that’s a compliment to director Göran Hugo Olsson. He made a film about America that felt home-made to this American. On the other hand, the occasional references to Mix Tape’s Swedish origins come off as a gimmick.

One reason the film feels authentically American is that most of the narration is homegrown–made up from recent interviews with such African-American activists as Angela Davis, Melvin Van Peebles, and Abiodun Oyewole. Their voices, recorded off-camera in 2010, tell the story from the point of view of people who shaped the times or were shaped by them.

The result is an intriguing and informative overview of the Black Power Movement, if a considerably one-sided one. Little attention is given to the bad decisions, reverse racism, and raging sexism that warped the movement. Or the inherent flaws in using violence to achieve social ends. No one, for instance, bothers to point out that if you’re going to brandish guns and insist on your right to use them in self-defense against the police, there’s a very good chance you will soon be dead.

I saw Black Power Mix Tape at the 2011 San Francisco International Film Festival.