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 Göran 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 Hitherto unpublished documentary material from Swedish television and interviews with the protagonists – then and now – provide a fresh insight into the history and significance of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 The previously unpublished archive footage contained in this film enables a younger generation to acquaint themselves with the Black Power movement and it’s universal impact. Eldridge Cleaver: “You're either part of the solution or part of the problem.”