Director Stanley Nelson, Jr. will personally present his documentary at the Central Library this Tues
Editor’s Note: This article previously reported that a truncated version of the film would screen. The library has since decided to present The Black Panthers in its original, theatrical version.
Don’t let the vague title of The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution fool you; the 2015 documentary’s aim is much higher than that of weeknight educational filler. Just ask the director. As part of a collaboration between Wisconsin Public Television and PBS’s Indie Lens Pop-up series, Central Cinema is bringing director Stanley Nelson, Jr. to personally present his film on Tues, Feb 9 in the Central Library.
Beginning with pronouncements from political activists and Civil Rights-era law enforcement, The Black Panthers gets right to the point: What you think you know about the Black Panthers is only a part of it. This historical “throat clearing” feels essential, and Nelson, Jr. repeatedly emphasizes as much with his interview subjects. The Civil Rights group’s easiest touchstone is a familiar image, of gun-toting black men in berets and leather jackets. And again while that’s a valid representation, it’s one that’s bundled up in white suburban paranoia and decades of misrepresentation.
The so-called “vanguard of the revolution” first began as a collective self-defense mechanism, a more extreme if not indefensible reaction from black Americans who were fed up with the strong-arm of the law and complicit hate crimes. But the movement quickly moved to establishing a legitimate manifesto, with magnetic leaders galvanizing spikes in membership. Black Panthers co-founder Huey Newton would make for an early public face, with Soul On Ice essayist Eldridge Cleaver later lending the movement an intellectual voice that could go toe to toe with the snide condescension of elites like William F. Buckley.
Publicly, black progressive politics were once seen exclusively as a man’s world, a front-facing dominance that crowded out and even internally discriminated against the many undervalued and unseen women in the Panthers’ ranks. Nelson, Jr.’s shedding a substantive light on the essential place of women in the movement is undoubtedly his biggest accomplishment here, and the film’s best moment is a beautiful illustration of female anonymity, superimposing a 13 year old girl’s letter to Newton over a collage of young black women’s faces.
Even with the slimmer 75-minute cut coming to Madison, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is a tidy and (relatively) exhaustive history of the movement. Pointing to external dangers like J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO, its gaze moves inward, too addressing the Panthers’ rank-and-file who abandoned their quiet domestic lives to spare loved ones from death threats. Like most historical docs, the approach here is straightforward. Unlike its surface-level contemporaries, The Black Panthers digs into its subject matter at a brisk, zealous clip, clarifying the movement’s vocal critics while addressing an invisible undermining of a revolution so few truly understand.
- The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution plays Tues, Feb 9 at 6:30p in Rms 301 and 302 of the Central Library. A discussion with director Stanley Nelson, Jr. will follow. Admission is FREE and open to the public.