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.

There will be a panel discussion after the film featuring documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah, political scholar Anthony Monteiro, and film archivist Kate Pourshariati immediately following the screening.

The screening begins at 8:00pm. Tickets are $8 General Admission/$5 Student Admission. Purchase tickets in advance online at: brownpapertickets.com. You can also join this event on Facebook.

ABOUT THE FILM

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.

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ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Louis Massiah

Louis Massiah is currently the Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore College. He is also an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker as well as the founder and executive director of Scribe Video Center, a community media arts organization. Louis’ award winning works, include W.E.B. Du Bois – A Biography in Four Voices, The Bombing of Osage Avenue, and Louise Alone Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words. Currently he is producing Haytian Stories, exploring the history of the 200-year relationship between the United States and Haiti. In 1990, Massiah produced, directed and wrote Power! and A Nation of Law?, two films for the landmark PBS series Eyes on the Prize II. Other production duties include senior creative consultant to Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, broadcast in 2000-2001 on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, as well as other free-lance reports for the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour. Mr. Massiah produced the live “MOVE Commission Hearings” for public television station WHYY. Massiah has worked in the programming department at WNET and has developed programs for WGBH’s American Experience. Massiah is the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship (1996-2001) for his documentary filmmaking. He has received awards from Columbia-DuPont, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Global Village Documentary Festival, the National Black Programming Consortium, the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and several Emmy award nominations. He was selected for a Pew fellowship, two Rockefeller Intercultural Fellowships. In 1999, he was selected to receive the Paul Robeson Award for Social Justice from Philadelphia’s Bread and Roses Community Foundation. Massiah received a B.A. from Cornell University and an M.S. in documentary filmmaking from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Aside from teaching regularly at Scribe, he has also been an artist-in-residence and on faculty at City College of New York, Princeton University, Ithaca College, the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, American University and Haverford College. In 2009 he was a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.

Anthony Monteiro, Ph.D.

Anthony Monteiro teaches in the Department of African American Studies and is co-director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought at Temple University. He has a long activist history in civil rights, Black power, African liberation and anti- death penalty work. He received his BA from Lincoln University, attended the University of Chicago under a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and received his PhD in sociology from Temple University. He has taught at the University of the Sciences, Rutgers University, Drexel University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He has published over 100 articles on topics related to Black people and global politics and economics. Dr. Monteiro was a delegate to the 6th Pan-African Congress held in Dar Es Salaam. He also participated in the conference held in Havana in 1990. He was a guest of the Angolan government in 1976 at its independence. He worked closely with the ANC and SWAPO during the struggles against apartheid. In 2000 he received an honorary doctorate degree from Lincoln University. Dr. Monteiro’s current book projects include W.E.B Du Bois and the Study of Black Humanity and a volume coedited with Professor Martin Kilson of Harvard University titled One Hundred Years of Black Philadelphia.

Kate Pourshariati

Kate Pourshariati is a film archivist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, (Penn Museum) where she works with a range of culturally and historically significant motion picture films, dating from 1913 to the 1990s. Kate has been involved with restoration of the first documentary sound film Matto Grosso, the Great Brazilian Wilderness (1931) and the seminal series Navajo Film Themselves (AKA Through Navajo Eyes) (1966).In addition to the cataloging, restoration and digitization of films, she has been working with source communities to share back the Museum’s historic film materials for re-interpretation and revision. Most recently she has been curating cultural documentaries at the Museum, including a new occasional series called Live From the Archives!, which consists of films made using Museum archival footage. Screenings are generally free and all are cordially welcomed.