The Black Power Mixtape - Essay Example

The Black Power Mixtape Introduction The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 shows the black civil right movements in America in opposition to racial discrimination against through the eyes of some Swedish news journalists. The film was directed by Goran Hugo Olsson a Swedish and helps depict a story of black power movement in a neutral eye. A little odd is the fact that the Swedish Journalists were following and recording the efforts and of course frustrations by blacks surviving in America’s back streets. All the documentation was for long stored in a basement for close to forty years until the making of this Mixtape. Indeed a Mixtape, the film presents the facts as they were, raw in a matter of speaking put together. It is refreshing due to its arbitrariness, not following a style but with the theme of showing the Black power in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. I, therefore, view it as a non-border cinema. The stylistic approaches used by the director of the film displays the struggles of blacks in 1960’s in a random and virgin, non-fictional memorabilia depicting the atmosphere as it was and benefited the presentation of a cinema of truth. Functions and Effects The film is a compilation of interviews from people that championed the Black power movement who after witnessing or experiencing the struggles of their own kind, had to stand up for themselves. Interviews include inter alia; Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and Dr. Martin Luther King. Their words and voice resonating and evoking such an era-specific picture of what occurred. Fictional movies such as ‘Mississippi Burning’ (1988) and Tate Taylor’s ‘The Help’ (2011) have often brought this era out in a palatable way and often giving misdemeanors that the enlightened white liberal were instrumental in liberation of minorities(Marukh). The film Jumps from one interview to another, one situation to another and, therefore, follows no order. The film in so doing gives a glorious snapshot of a time not well represented by scripted movies. The refreshing feel of this Mixtape is indeed the echoing through time of experiences with racial discrimination, police brutality, their feelings towards the situations and solutions to combat such troubles. Angela Davis’s voice interview when in jail reverberates over and over again in my head when she says, “You ask me if I approve of violence, I just find that incredible.” She struggles to show the misconceptions towards her people, the black people. It shows the irony of the situation where a people violent and racist towards the black people, depict violence as coming from the black people. She evokes so much by her words and silence too just after the short interview that resonates almost half a century later. Stokely Carmichael agrees with the idea of Dr Martin Luther King policy of non-violence as a method for blacks to use to change the hearts of the racial discriminators. In his interview, the impossibility of Dr King’s method is brought out in a humorous and almost seductive way amid the chaotic and dangerous atmosphere. Impossibility in this method is because to be moved to a change of heart required conscience which discriminators seem not to have as seen by Carmichael. We are reminded of the many failed revolutions and counterrevolutions in a time that shaped the culture that we enjoy today. During an interview with Stokely Carmichael’s mother Mabel, the film takes an awakening turn. In an inspiring and downright courageous act, Stokely takes the microphone from the Swedish journalist and asks his mother why his father, a carpenter was laid off so often. Even without watching more of the film, one can tell the frustration, this fresh graduate feels knowing too well the truth but watching his mother struggle to go around the facts. The lack of freedom of expression or the double standard of it, the fear experienced by the ‘coloured’ people as the mother calls them. The result of the film is sobering making one gets a feeling of the situation as it was. Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael’s interviews are set against the voices or contemporary neo-soul and hip hop musicians such as Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli among others giving a tasteful spatial contrast in the generations. This makes the film to be more attractive towards the current jazzy and hip hop generation without compromising substance for style. The eloquence and passion of the speakers is well understood by Olsson as the groundswell giving traction and fueling success of the movements. These could have been extremely influential in other places, in the world such as the struggle in South Africa against apartheid. The setting of the film means that it can be shown in cinemas, film festivals as well as used in educational settings. The use of the raw format of interviews with the different speakers would help a student studying about any of them get a feel who they were and what they represented. It is a film that shows history rather than replicating it and be found in libraries and still be relevant years from now. Conclusion The random use of styles and use of raw, unedited interview clips with different people who influenced the black power movement, has had an inspiring effect on the viewers of the film. Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis and Elaine Brown bring out not just passion but nuance and intelligence while speaking with such urgency for a revolution. The revolution is marked by the poor minority rising up against a system of brutality and racial discrimination to a system of freedom of expression, power to the people and protection from police brutality. Education and media are brought out as such strong factors for change. If oppression is felt for too long in an educated and young society, revolutionary movements are likely to occur such as in Egypt. Work Cited Mayukh, Sen. Interview; Black Power Mixtape. Art and Race. 2011. Retrieved on April 2012 from: Read More