BLACK PANTHER WOMEN FILM SERIES
March 2016
“Women make history every hour of every day. For they bring forth life.” – Mumia Abu Jamal
To mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self Defence (1966 – 2016) Black History Studies presents a series of screenings that look at the role of women in the Black Panther Party in March 2016 for International Women’s Month.
“It is our belief that the role of Black Women is the same as everyone else in the struggle to educate, mobilize, organise, and fight to the best of her ability.The word revolutionary has no gender. It is neither masculine or feminine. It is neutral, which means a revolutionary can either be male or female.” -Right On!, December 1971
ASSATA SHAKUR: A BIOGRAPHY (12)
Wednesday 2nd March 2016
Assata Shakur teaches us in her autobiography that: “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”
For her truth-telling and struggle for Black Liberation the US government has created a bounty for her capture at $2 million.
On May 2 1973, Black Panther activist Assata Shakur (fsn) JoAnne Chesimard, was pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, shot twice and then charged with murder of a police officer. Assata spent six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before escaping out of the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979 and moving to Cuba.
This is an intensely personal and political autobiography that belies the fearsome image of Joanne Chesimard. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hands of government officials.
This event will take place on WEDNESDAY 2ND MARCH 2016 from 7.00pm to 9.00pm.
The event will be held at the PCS Headquarters, 160 Falcon Road, Clapham Junction, London SW11 2LN, (3 minutes walk from Clapham Junction mainline station. Buses to the venue 35, 37, 39, 49, 77, 87, 156, 70, 219, 239, 295, 319, 337, 334, 345, C3, G1). Free parking on site.
Doors open at 6.30pm. The event will start 7pm sharp!
Hot food will be on sale.
REFLECTIONS UNHEARD: BLACK WOMEN IN CIVIL RIGHTS (12)
Friday 4th March 2016 from 7pm – 9pm @ Bernie Grant Arts Centre Cinema, Town Hall Approach Road, Tottenham Green, N15 4RX. Tickets: £8.00.
Saturday 5th March 2016 from 2pm – 5pm @ Upstairs at the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton Oval, Coldharbour Lane, London, SW2 1JG. Tickets: £8.00
Where do Black women activists fit into the epochal struggles for equality and liberation during the 1960s and 70s? This feature-length documentary unearths the story of Black women’s political marginalization-between the male-dominated Black Power movement and second wave feminism, which was largely white and middle class-showing how each failed to recognise Black women’s overlapping racial and gender identities. Archival footage and in-depth interviews with former members reveal how Black women mobilized, fought for recognition, and raised awareness of how sexism and class issues affected women of colour within and outside The Black Power Movement and mainstream feminism.
Archival footage and in-depth interviews with former members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), SNCC’s Black Women’s Liberation Committee, the Black Panther Party, Third World Women’s Alliance, and the National Black Women’s Feminist Organization reveal how black women mobilized, fought for recognition, and raised awareness of how sexism and class issues affected women of color within and outside The Black Power Movement and mainstream feminism. Prominently featured activists include Frances Beale, Angela Davis, Kola Boof, Nikki Giovanni, Rosemari Mealy, Judy Richardson, Gwendolyn Simmons, Deborah Singletary, and Eugenia Wiltshire. Required viewing for Women’s Studies, African American Studies, and students of the Civil Rights Movement.
MAMA C: URBAN WARRIOR IN THE AFRICAN BUSH (U)
Friday 11th March 2016
Mama C: Urban Warrior in the African Bush tells the story of Charlotte O’Neal-or Mama C as she is known-poet, musician, visual artist, spoken word artist and ex-member of the Kansas City Black Panther Party. Mama C, whose life was formed growing up in the artistically and politically vibrant atmosphere of the African American community in Kansas City, KS, has lived for past forty years in the Tanzanian village of Imbaseni in the shadow of Mount Meru.
Mama C speaks the dialect of Black culture in the 1960s and Kiswahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. As a high-school student in the 1960s, she took part in community activism and Civil Rights work, leading a protest at her high-school to force the school administration to recognize the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King. She joined the Kansas City Black Panther Party as one of the youngest members and married Pete O’Neal. In 1971, Mama C and Pete joined Eldridge Cleaver and Black Panthers in exile in Algeria. A few years later, they moved to Tanzania to join African-American and international revolutionary expatriates who came to participate in President Julius Nyerere’s project of nation-building.
This event will take place on FRIDAY 11TH MARCH 2016 from 7pm to 9pm. Doors open at 7.00pm and the film will start at 7.30pm.
The event will be held at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Town Hall Approach Road, Tottenham Green, London, N15 4RX.
THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 (12)
Monday 14th March 2016
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a 2011 documentary film, directed by Göran Olsson that examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in American society from 1967 to 1975. It features the found footage shot by a group of Swedish journalists (discovered some 30 years later in the cellar of Swedish Television) overlaid with commentaries and interviews from leading contemporary African-American artists, activists, musicians and scholars.
The footage includes appearances by Stokely Carmichael, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Emile de Antonio, Angela Davis and commentaries by Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Harry Belafonte, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Robin Kelley and Abiodun Oyewole, amongst others.
This event will take place on MONDAY 14 MARCH 2016 from 7.00pm to 9.30pm.
The event will be held at the PCS Headquarters, 160 Falcon Road, Clapham Junction, London SW11 2LN, (3 minutes walk from Clapham Junction mainline station. Buses to the venue 35, 37, 39, 49, 77, 87, 156, 70, 219, 239, 295, 319, 337, 334, 345, C3, G1). Free parking on site.
Doors open at 6.30pm. The event will start 7pm sharp!
Hot food will be on sale.
BLACK PANTHER WOMAN (12)
Friday 18th March 2016
“Black Panther Woman,” director Rachel Perkins’ documentary on the little known Brisbane chapter of the Black Panther Party, which was directly inspired by the American Black Panthers. In 1972 Marlene Cummins fell in love with the leader of the Australian Black Panther Party. With the break-up of that relationship, she spiralled into a cycle of addiction that left her on the streets and vulnerable. Forty years later Marlene travels to a gathering of international Black Panthers in New York. The journey takes her back in time. Still struggling with addiction, she reveals the secrets she has held onto, to face her demons today.
This event will take place on FRIDAY 18TH MARCH 2016.
The event will be held at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Town Hall Approach Road, Tottenham Green, London, N15 4RX.
For location details go to http://www.berniegrantcentre.co.uk/index.php/your-visit
Doors open at 7.00pm. The event will start 7.30pm sharp!
ANGELA DAVIS: PORTRAIT OF A REVOLUTIONARY (12)
Saturday 19th March 2016 from 2pm – 5pm @ Upstairs at the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton Oval, Coldharbour Lane, London, SW2 1JG. Tickets: £8.00
Friday 25th March 2016 from 7pm – 9pm @ Bernie Grant Arts Centre Cinema, Town Hall Approach Road, Tottenham Green, N15 4RX. Tickets: £8.00
The late ’60s and early ’70s produced a large crop of social critics and self-labelled revolutionaries. Outspoken Black militant feminist and communist Angela Davis was one of these. Davis, also a professor of philosophy at U.C.L.A., is the subject of this documentary film made by one of her U.C.L.A. students. It features her in the classroom, at a “rap” session, studying quietly, and giving her rumbustious speeches at antiwar and other demonstrations.