The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Black power mixtape 1967-1975

Repository: Louverture Films

Collection Description (Extant): The Black Power Mixtape examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in the black community and Diaspora from 1967 to 1975. The film combines music, startling 16mm footage (lying undiscovered in the cellar of Swedish Television for 30 years), and contemporary audio interviews from leading African-American artists, activists, musicians and scholars.

The Black Power Mixtape is an archive- and music- driven documentary that examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in the African-American community and Diaspora from 1967 to 1975. Combining startlingly fresh and meaningful 16mm footage that had been lying undiscovered in the cellar of Swedish Television for the past 30 years, with contemporary audio interviews from leading African-American artists, activists, musicians and scholars, Mixtape looks at the people, society, culture and style that fuelled a change. Utilizing an innovative format that riffs on the popular 70s mixtape format, the Black Power Mixtape is a cinematic and musical journey into the ghettos of America.

At the end of the Sixties and into the early Seventies, Swedish interest in the US Civil Rights Movement and the US anti-war movement peaked. With a combination of commitment and naiveté, Swedish filmmakers traveled across the Atlantic to explore the Black Power Movement, which was being alternately ignored or portrayed in the US media as a violent, nascent terrorist movement. Despite the obstacles they were confronted with, both from the conservative white American power establishment and from radicalized Movement members themselves, the Swedish filmmakers did not cease their investigation and ultimately formed bonds with key figures in the BPM, based on their common objective of realizing equal rights for all.

Filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson brings this newly discovered footage to light and introduces it to a new generation across the world in a penetrating examination – through the lens of Swedish filmmakers – of the Black Power Movement from 1967-1975, and its worldwide resonance.

Writen and Directed by: Göran Hugo Olsson
Produced by: Annika Rogell, Story AB

Co-Produced by: Joslyn Barnes & Danny Glover, Louverture Films

Music by Ahmir Questlove Thompson & Om'Mas Keith.
Executive producer Corey Smyth for Blacksmith Corp

Art Director: Stefania Malmsten

Edited by: Göran Hugo Olsson & Hanna Lejonqvist

Collection URL: http://blackpowermixtape.com

Date(s): 1967-1975

Language: English

Interviewees: Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Emile de Antonio, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Harry Belafonte, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Robin Kelley, Abiodun Oyewole, Sonia Sanchez, Questlove

Rights (CRHP): Contact the repository which holds the collection for information on rights.

Subjects:

African American civil rights workers
Black militant organizations
Black nationalism
Black Panther Party
Black power

Genres:

Interviews
Speeches
Videorecordings