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A new year brings new opportunities for comic book characters. For example, something new, weird, and bad always happens to Spider-Man. According to an Istagram post from Marvel Comics, bad things will happen to Spidey this year, too. However, we don’t know if the tragedy or mystery is about Peter Parker or Miles Morales. Peter's already dealing with his 8 Deaths storyline and Miles is a vampire. What could happen next?

This article will highlight ten Marvel Comics characters, teams, and universes that will make waves in 2025. There are world savers, fighters, and possible returns to look forward to. Let’s start with Marvel’s Mightiest Mutants in a possible upcoming war.

Writer's note. The Instagram picture below will be referred to a lot in this article. View this post on Instagram

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Magik

I fully expect writer Ashley Allen and artist Germán Peralta to make Magik (a.

Many of us probably think we know how racist anti-Black ideas started or think racism was always part of the human condition. Director Roger Ross Williams challenges these notions with his adaptation of Ibram X. Kendi’s book “Stamped From the Beginning.” Relying on testimony from Black female scholars and Kendi’s research, the helmer starts by posing a provocative question: “What is wrong with Black people?” By the end of the film, Williams unsparingly topples the sanctimoniousness inherent in thinking the answer is simple or clear. Even if it is.

True to its title, “Stamped From the Beginning” seeks to explain the origin of anti-Blackness. According to activist Angela Davis, one of the esteemed talking heads who give the film its credibility: “It’s not about the color of one’s skin or the grade of one’s hair. It’s about slavery.” That is how Europeans justified the...

Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams talks to high-profile Black women in a hybrid documentary/animation based on Dr Ibram X Kendi’s landmark book

Dr Ibram X Kendi first published Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America in 2016 and it’s since had many forms, though this 92-minute film might be the most heart-poundingly persuasive yet. Alongside Ava DuVernay’s Academy Award-winning 13th and Elvis Mitchell’s delightfully idiosyncratic Is That Black Enough for You?!? it also solidifies Netflix’s reputation as a home for worthwhile Black history documentaries.

The film’s particular innovation is to privilege Black women’s perspectives on the history of American racism, and with the exception of Kendi himself, every expert commentator here is a Black woman. It’s an undeniable coup to have legendary movement leader Angela Davis included, though she doesn’t say much. More memorable are contributions...

Mike Birbiglia Sets “The Old Man and the Pool” Comedy Special at Netflix

Following a run on both Broadway and in the West End, Mike Birbiglia is bringing his comedy special “The Old Man and the Pool” to Netflix for all to see.

The new special is Birbiglia’s fifth for the streamer, starting with 2008’s “What I Should Have Said Was Nothing” and up to his most recent, “The New One,” in 2019. “The Old Man and the Pool” sees Birbiglia “take on life’s big questions: why are we here? What’s next? Exactly how much chlorine are they putting in the Ymca pool?”

The show ran on Broadway from Nov. 13, 2022–Jan. 15, 2023, followed by its run in London’s West End from Sept. 12–Oct. 7. The hour-long special debuts on the streamer on Nov. 21.

Sign Up $6.99+ / month netflix.com “Good Burger” Sequel Releases Official Trailer

Paramount+ is finally serving up...

Following up his narrative drama Cassandro, Roger Ross Williams returned to the documentary realm for his second feature of the year with Stamped from the Beginning. Adapting Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book, the TIFF selection utilizes vivid animations and leading female scholars to explore the history of anti-Black racist ideas. Ahead of a Netflix release next month, the first trailer has now arrived.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams brings Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s New York Times bestseller to the screen with Stamped from the Beginning. Published in 2016, Dr. Kendi’s National Book Award winner chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. Williams’ documentary adaptation uses an innovative animation process that blends live action with the art of the era to illuminate figures and moments both well-known and obscure, both historical and contemporary.

Netflix’s trailer for Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams’ Stamped From the Beginning features clips of female scholars discussing the connection between the United States’ history of racism and the history of power. The documentary based on Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s bestselling book will premiere on November 10, 2023 in select theaters, followed by a release on the streaming service on November 20.

“When we started looking at historians and scholars, we came up with a long list. I noticed the pattern that most of the people doing the work around racism in America were Black women,” stated director Williams in an interview on Netflix’s Tudum. “I asked them in pre-interviews, ‘Why do you do this work?’ And many of them said the same thing — that they had no choice. This was their experience and their life. And if they’re going to dedicate their life to something, it’s going...

Netflix has released the trailer for “Stamped From the Beginning,” a hybrid documentary and scripted feature that delves into race in the United States.

Roger Ross Williams directs Ibram X. Kendi’s book adaptation of the same name.

With Black women scholars such as Angela Davis, Dr. Imani Perry and activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham as the main storytellers, the documentary examines the creation and perpetuation of anti-Black racism and white supremacy in America. From slavery to police brutality, Williams examines the dehumanizing historical myths that have degraded Black people. He also calls out white supremacy and the myths started by white people and how mass media as well as political strategy have long painted Black people as dangerous.

“I read Dr. Kendi’s book and it transformed me in many ways, it made me confront how I see myself as a Black man and I immediately knew I had to...

Spoiler Alert: This interview contains spoilers from “Scream VI,” now playing in theaters.

The casual horror fan probably noticed a few iconic masks and monsters in the “Scream VI” subway scene: There’s Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Pinhead and even modern staples like Florence Pugh’s flower dress from “Midsommar” and a group of tethered people from Jordan Peele’s “Us.” But costume designer Avery Plewes and directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett went to extra lengths to pack more than 50 Easter eggs, costumes and blink-and-you-miss-it references into the latest “Scream.”

Tracking down Ghostface in New York City, the “Scream VI” crew, consisting of Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown), Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding), Ethan Landry (Jack Champion) and Danny Brackett (Josh Segarra), pile into the subway to confront the latest masked killer. However, it’s Halloween time, which means the train car...

There have been a lot of TV crossover episodes over the years, but this may be the most unique one yet: PBS’ “Finding Your Roots” and host Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. will make a major appearance on Fox’s “The Simpsons” this Sunday. Variety has an exclusive first look at Gates’ appearance; scroll down for more.

Gates is a major guest star on “The Simpsons” episode that airs Sunday, Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. Et. The episode, “Carl Carlsen Rides Again,” centers on Homer Simpson’s colleague at the nuclear power plant (and Lenny’s best friend) Carl, who delves into his racial identity for the first time. On the episode, Carl discovers his background by going on “Finding Your Roots.”

Loni Steele Sosthand wrote the episode; here’s the logline: “When Carl is smitten by a beautiful black woman, her strong ties to her heritage ignite insecurities in him.

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Forty years after the high-stakes trial that catapulted 26-year-old scholar and Marxist feminist Angela Davis into the spotlight as a revolutionary icon, Shola Lynch’s 2012 documentary, “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” relives those transformative years of Davis’ life. It’s quite a journey: Even as she was branded a terrorist, Davis spurred a worldwide political movement for her freedom. The portrait of that story reignites discussion on the radical movement she joined and eventually led, and it still holds the power to inspire a new generation to similar acts of collective progressivism, all in the name of political and social reforms.

“Terrorist” is far from the only label Davis has faced over the years: activist, intellectual, inspiration, and fearless leader all...

Nearly 30 years ago, Daughters of the Dust ruptured the fixed line of film history. It was the first film directed by a Black woman to see theatrical distribution in the United States. It fit neither the Black history Hollywood co-opted, nor the modern Black story they allowed (urban peril). Daughters of the Dust portrayed a day in the life of the Gullah-Geechee community off the coast of South Carolina through their circular perception of time, a past, present and future that runs concurrently. Nana Peazant, the old matriarch, urges her successors to cling to their roots, to hang on to her, as each body holds both “the last of the old and the first of the new.” The younger generations plan to run up the river north, leaving behind Ibo Landing, home to centuries of their ancestors. An unborn child narrates from the future and dawdles through the present day,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Carl Reiner, Annie Reiner, and Mel Brooks, photographed together at Brooks's 94th birthday celebration.We're saddened by news that actor, comedian, screenwriter and director Carl Reiner has died. Mel Brooks remembers Reiner, his best friend, in a post reflecting upon their famous collaborations together. Sundance Film Festival director Tabitha Jackson has unveiled plans for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which will take place "live in Utah and in at least 20 independent and community cinemas across the U.S. and beyond." Elsewhere, the Locarno International Film Festival announced its 20 selections for the Films After Tomorrow program, which aims to offer support to productions that were put on hold by the health crisis. These films include films by Lucrecia Martel, Wang Bing, Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Helena Wittmann, and Lisandro Alonso. Recommended VIEWINGArthur Jafa directed...

Filmmaker and rapper Boots Riley and activist Angela Davis delivered speeches at a Juneteenth march in Oakland, California.

Related: Photos of the Juneteenth March in Oakland

“We’re at a momentous point in history right now. We’ve been taught to look up to the Civil Rights Movement, for instance… The March on Washington, 200,000 people,” Riley told protestors at Oakland’s Oscar Grant Plaza, named after the 22-year-old black man who was shot and killed by a transit police officer on New Year’s Day 2009.

“We had, these past two weeks,...

Exclusive: HBO Max has won a spec auction for The Ancestor, a psychological thriller script by Kay Oyegun that will be developed as a star vehicle for Tika Sumpter, produced by Michael B. Jordan and Alana Mayo’s Outlier Society. I’ve heard the deal was high six figures.

Several suitors were in the mix for the spec which Oyegun wrote from a story she hatched with Sumpter, who’ll play an African American female med student who finds herself in a timely psychological thriller premise in the tradition of Get Out. Sumpter has co-starred in the Ride Along films and played the future First Lady Michelle Robinson Obama in Southside With You. She most recently co-starred in Sonic The Hedgehog.

Oyegun is the This Is Us writer/producer who just made an overall deal at 20th Century Fox Television who wrote the Angela Davis movie at Lionsgate, BPI at...

With “Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee follows his long overdue Oscar win for “BlacKkKlansman” by revealing a side of the Vietnam story that’s seldom told. Through the Trojan horse of a treasure-hunt adventure movie, the director explores the mindset of Black soldiers who fought for their country at a time when African Americans were being oppressed at home. to claim the loot they were ordered to retrieve decades earlier, but stashed for themselves instead. The result is overlong and erratic, but also frequently surprising for a contemporary riff on the classic greed-doesn’t-pay parable “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

Entertainment journalists have taken to describing “Da 5 Bloods” as “timely” because its release coincides with the nationwide protests that spontaneously arose following the murder of George Floyd. That is true, but let’s be clear: Lee has always been ahead-of-his-timely. He reminded us of that a week ago...

Network: Bet.

Episodes: Ongoing (half-hour).

Seasons: Ongoing.

TV show dates: February 12, 2019 — present.

Series status: Has not been cancelled.

Performers include: Lala Milan, Rj Walker, Leland Martin, Tetona Jackson, Tequan Richmond, and Brittany Inge.

TV show description:

From executive producers Halle Berry and Lena Waithe, the Boomerang TV show is a sequel to the 1992 romantic comedy feature film of the same name, which stars Eddie Murphy as Marcus Graham, Robin Givens as Jacqueline Broyer, and Berry as Angela Davis.

The serialized sitcom follows Jacqueline's son Bryson (Richmond) and Marcus and Angela's daughter, Simone (Jackson). It traces their journey as they try to forge a path outside the shadows their parents have cast and make a name...

Doc about first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature premiered at Sundance.

Magnolia Pictures has swooped on North American rights to Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ documentary and recent Sundance world premiere Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am.

The film explores the life and works of the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, from her childhood growing up in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio, to 1970s-era book tours with Muhammed Ali, to the front lines with activist Angela Davis, to her own riverfront writing room.

Greenfield-Sanders interviews Hilton Als, Davis, Fran Lebowitz, Walter Mosley, Sonia Sanchez,...

Magnolia Pictures announced on Tuesday that it has landed North American rights to Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ uplifting documentary “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am.”

The documentary, about the legendary storyteller, who was the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

“Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am,” offers an artful and intimate meditation on the life and works of the acclaimed novelist. From her childhood in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio to ’70s-era book tours with Muhammad Ali, from the front lines with Angela Davis to her own riverfront writing room, Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics and colleagues on an exploration of race, America, history and the human condition as seen through the prism of her own literature. Inspired to write because no one took a “little black girl” seriously, Morrison reflects on her lifelong deconstruction of the master narrative.

Exclusive: Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, an uplifting documentary chronicling the vibrant life and compelling works of the legendary storyteller who in 1993 became the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize.

In addition to Nobel Laureate Morrison, the film features conversations with Hilton Als, Angela Davis, Fran Lebowitz, Walter Mosley and Sonia Sanchez, as well as Oprah Winfrey, who adapted Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved into a 1998 feature film directed by the late Jonathan Demme.

Magnolia is aiming for a theatrical release before year’s end. The Pieces I Am, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, will stream on Hulu. The film will make its exclusive U.S. broadcast premiere in late 2020 on PBS as part of the American Masters series.

The documentary acquisition...

Ava DuVernay is standing in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick.

The Selma filmmaker, 42, voiced her support for the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback — who started the #TakeAKnee movement to protest racial injustices — on Twitter on Sunday and said she won’t be tuning in to watch Super Bowl Liii.

“I will not be a spectator, viewer or supporter of the #SuperBowl today in protest of the @NFL’s racist treatment of @Kaepernick7 and its ongoing disregard for the health + well-being of all its players. To watch the game is to compromise my beliefs. It’s not worth it. #ImWithKap,” DuVernay wrote.

What if there was an African nation that largely escaped the world’s notice, but produced a substance that powered cellphones, computers, and even electric vehicles? There is. But we aren’t talking about Wakanda, or vibranium. “Black Panther” fired imaginations with its story of a fictional country that has evaded colonialism and exploitation by mining a fictional substance, vibranium, to produce the greatest technology on earth. Vibranium has a real-life equivalent in cobalt, a mineral used to power everything from cell phones to electric cars. But Wakanda is only a dream. Also Read: Why Angela Davis Needs a 'Forrest Gump'-Style Biopic (Podcast) In real life, the...

Denzel Washington’s Oscar-nominated performance gives this messy legal drama some zing

Roman J Israel, Esq is a strange film, much stranger than features containing Oscar-nominated performances tend to be. Denzel Washington plays Israel, a brilliant, socially awkward, behind-the-scenes civil rights lawyer who is left high and dry when his partner unexpectedly dies. Offered a new job by Colin Farrell’s wealthy criminal lawyer, he is thrust into a set of new circumstances and presented with a series of moral conundrums.

Directed by Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler), the film isn’t quite sure what it’s doing. It begins as a legal drama, but lacks a courtroom climax. It’s set in the present day, but is bogged down by period trappings (Israel listens to 70s soul on an iPod classic, carries a mobile and is guided by a poster of the civil rights activist Angela Davis that hangs in his...

The documentary film and television community came together to honor their own at the festive 33rd Annual Ida Documentary Awards celebration Saturday night at the Paramount Studio Theatre. The evening’s top prizes went to Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini’s Sundance-jury-winning love story “Dina” for Best Feature, and Laura Checkoway’s Oscar-shortlisted “Edith+Eddie” for Best Short.

Other winners included Dan Lindsay and Tj Martin’s Oscar-shortlisted “La 92” for the ABC News VideoSource Award, PBS’ Independent Lens for Best Curated Series, HBO’s “The Defiant Ones” for Best Limited Series, BBC’s “Planet Earth II” for Best Episodic Series, The New York Times Op-Docs for Best Short Form Series (which boasts three Oscar-shortlisted shorts), and Joel Fendelman’s “Man on Fire” for the David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award.

Charles Burnett presented the Emerging Filmmaker Award to Yance Ford, winner of the Sundance Special Jury Award for Storytelling,...

It’s becoming increasingly rare to see a day go by without hearing about a profoundly moving and human statement through the form of activism. In an age of reality show presidents and racism being propagated from the highest ranks of American political office, activism of all shades has become a major part of American life, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or creed. However, that was not always the case.

One of America’s great activist leaders is still standing side by side with marchers across the country, and yet many don’t know her story. Dolores Huerta is less well known than most historic activists, even than someone like Cesar Chavez who would work hand in hand with Huerta in forming the modern workers movement. Co-founder of the first farm workers unions with partner in liberation Chavez, Huerta is at once a strong willed mother of 11 children...

This is Us writer Kay Oyegun has been tapped to write the biopic of civil rights activist Angela Davis for Lionsgate.

Nina Yang Bongiovi, who produced Dope and Fruitvale Station, and Sidra Smith are producing while Forest Whitaker is executive producing.

Davis began making waves as a member of the Communist Party USA and associate member of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. She made headlines when she was fired from her job as assistant professor at UCLA by the board of regents, urged by Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. The ensuing drama saw her regain...

"There is a freedom tide rising in our hemisphere." Array has released an official trailer for a documentary titled The House on Coco Road, from filmmaker Damani Baker. The documentary profiles Baker's own family that moved away from Oakland, California in the 1980s only to end up directly inside the Grenada Revolution, which America was involved with. The film features first hand accounts from activists including Angela Davis, Fania Davis and Fannie Haughton. It also has a score by musician/songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello. This looks like another powerful, eye-opening doc about racism and the struggle for justice in America - including going all the way to Grenada to make a point. I'm very curious about seeing this doc. Here's the official trailer (+ posters) for Damani Baker's The House on Coco Road, direct from YouTube: Set amidst the Grenada Revolution, The House on Coco Road documents one family's flight from racial tensions in 1980's Oakland,...

Forest Whitaker has joined Codeblack Films’ Angela Davis biopic as an executive producer, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

The actor boards the project after Lionsgate’s Codeblack acquired the movie rights last year to Angela Davis: An Autobiography, centering on the life and legacy of the prominent civil rights activist. He joins Nina Yang Bongiovi, with whom he also produced Fruitvale Station and Dope.

Sidra Smith, who produced the 2012 doc Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, and Codeblack Enterprises CEO Jeff Clanagan also are producing the film. Davis will serve as an executive producer with her niece, playwright Eisa Davis.

Whitaker's upcoming films include...

Jay Z and Will Smith will executive produce an upcoming HBO miniseries about Emmett Till, a teenager whose death in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement. A writer is currently being sought for the project that is in "active development," Deadline reports, with the as-yet-untitled miniseries expected to run six hours.

Till was 14 years old when he was brutally murdered in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a married white woman. The two men charged in Till's killing were later acquitted; they would eventually admit to slaying the teenager but avoided further prosecution.

We’ve all heard some variation on the “priest walks into a bar” joke, but this week’s Mistresses found the zinger walking right into the church, planting a not-exactly-chaste kiss on Karen Kim’s lips and scoring an invitation to a parish mixer — Kogi truck included!

RelatedEmmys 2015: The 47 Biggest Snubs

Surely this qualifies as divine intervention — even if the most open-minded of us are still trying to wrap our heads around the Lord-tell-me-this-isn’t-happening “Vivian feeds Alec toast, Alec kisses Karen on the forehead” montage that kicked off the episode. (Ditto the awkward house party for throuples, quints and quatros.

In August of 2006, seven friends, New Jersey Afro-American lesbians all, decided to check out the West Village in Manhattan to escape the engrained homophobia of Newark. "That night we didn't have a destination. We came to the Village to have fun. Look at the girls. Be gay," one noted.

But as the septet was walking past the IFC Center, a multiplex art house on the Avenue of the Americas, Wayne Buckle, 28, who was sitting on a fire hydrant, tried to pick up one of the ladies, Patreese Johnson. When Johnson noted she was gay, Buckle was said to have made homophobic comments, reportedly employing such terms as "dyke," and "lesbian bitch," plus an antisocial phrase or two including "I'll fuck you straight, sweetheart" and "Let me get some of that."

Then he apparently spit on and threw a lit cigarette at the young women and approached them menacingly. Within the...

Finding the right archival material for your documentary can be an enormous and daunting undertaking -- one that, if you don't go about it the right way, may not pay off. Panelists on the "Dig Into Archives" panel at Doc NYC yesterday highlighted the most important things to keep in mind when researching and trying to secure the rights to archival material. The panelists included Frank Keraudren, co-director, "The Dog," Shola Lynch, director, "Free Angela and all Political Prisoners," Tom Jennings, director, "Mlk: The Assassination Tapes" and Scott Norman, content manager, NBC News Archives. Judith Aley, who has worked as an archival researcher on "When the Levees Broke," "Sicko" and "The Tillman Story," among other documentaries, moderated. "Free Angela Davis" tells the story of how Angela Davis' radical political stance wrongly implicated her in a kidnapping attempt and landed her on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list. The final...

Second-time filmmaker Shola Lynch, having just finished her first project about Brooklyn-based Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential bid, did not want to make her next film about "another black woman." But political activist Angela Davis was simply too rich of a subject for Lynch to pass up. After acquiring an exclusive contract that allowed Lynch access to Mr. Davis's story and the people in Angela's life, the process of constructing a second feature-length documentary was underway. "Free Angela and All Political Prisoners" took Lynch eight years to complete, but what came out of that long process is an emotional, political crime drama "with a love story at the center," a story that offers a detailed look into Angela Davis's life as a political activist and the activities that lead to her 1971 court case. Through rare verité footage, exclusive photographs, and never-before-seen courtroom sketches, Lynch weaves a narrative out of Angela's.

Second-time filmmaker Shola Lynch, having just finished her first project about Brooklyn-based Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential bid, did not want to make her next film about "another black woman." But political activist Angela Davis was simply too rich of a subject for Lynch to pass up. After acquiring an exclusive contract that allowed Lynch access to Mr. Davis's story and the people in Angela's life, the process of constructing a second feature-length documentary was underway. Free Angela and All Political Prisoners took Lynch eight years to complete, but what ...

New York -- In the late 1960s and early 1970s, millions of people across America and around the world knew the name, face and Afro of the young black academic and activist Angela Davis. Today, far fewer do, and Davis, now 69 but sporting a similar hairstyle, couldn't be happier about it. Even so, she agreed to fly from Oakland to New York this week in order to attend a Peggy Siegal luncheon today in support of a new documentary about her life, Shola Lynch's Free Angela and All Political Prisoners. I had the good fortune of being seated right beside

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Göteborg, Sweden – Free Angela and All Political Prisoners was screened at Way Out West 2013 in cooperation with Folkets Bio. This powerful feature-length documentary is centered on the struggle of legendary college professor and civil rights activist, Angela Davis, who finds herself accused in a failed escape attempt that ended in a shootout, four dead and Angela on the FBI Most Wanted list.

Directed by Shola Lynch, Free Angela combines archival material with new interviews including a series of interviews with Davis herself that makes for a well executed film. Through the film, Angela has the opportunity to share her intimate stories and speak out about her actions during that time.

Lynch’s film captivates the viewer, returning them to a troubled time in American history, during the civil rights movement and Angela’s struggle. Her story challenged the perceptions of political freedom in America back then and is as relevant then,...

Tags: Alice WalkerBeauty in TruthPratibha Parmarmoviesmovie interviewswomen of colorIMDbactivism

The Color Purple, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about black communities and interpersonal relations between men and women of color in the South, catapulted Alice Walker to fame as a writer. But beyond this work (actually her tenth novel) many of us do not know the complexity and richness of her life, not only as a writer but as a global activist.

True to her artistic career, filmmaker Pratibha Parmar is continuing her efforts to make history through her latest film, Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth, which premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 31. In this inspiring and informative documentary, Parmar tells the story of Alice Walker, from poverty-stricken child of the unbearably racist South to acclaimed writer and activist. Through a blend of archival footage that recreates the political and social contexts of Walker’s life from the mid...

Three very worthwhile documentaries are now available on DVD and/or VOD for you to check out! First, Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal is now on iTunes and DVD. Featuring contributions from the likes of Cornel West, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Dick Gregory, Peter Coyote, Ruby Dee, M-1, Giancarlo Esposito, Amy Goodman, and many others, Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, focuses on Abu-Jamal's career as a prolific writer and journalist from Death Row. The DVD package includes the explosive new short film Manufacturing Guilt, which details the efforts of the Philadelphia Police Department and...

First Run Features film will release Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal on iTunes and DVD on June 11. The home video package will Include the explosive new short film Manufacturing Guilt, which details the efforts of the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney's office to frame Mumia Abu-Jamal, as the press release states. Featuring contributions from the likes of Cornel West, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Dick Gregory, Peter Coyote, Ruby Dee, M-1, Giancarlo Esposito, Amy Goodman, and many others, Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, focuses on Abu-Jamal's career as a prolific writer and...

DVD Release Date: Aug. 20, 2013

Price: DVD $26.98

Studio: Lionsgate

The tumultuous life of Angela Davis is chronicled in Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.

The 2013 documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners is an historic account of the tumultuous events that befell African American activist, writer and scholar Angela Davis and her cohorts in the late 1960s.

The film tells the dramatic story of how Angela Davis—a professor at UCLA who led the Communist party USA and had close relations with the Black Panther Party—was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers’ August, 1970 abduction of Judge Harold Haley of Marin Country, California, which resulted in a shootout, four dead, and her name on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.

Directed by Shola Lynch, the unrated Free Angela received a limited release to theaters in the U.S. in April, 2013 following its September, 2012 premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

Watch the trailer for Shola Lynch's Free Angela and All Political Prisoners documentary which opens in theaters on April 5th via Codeblack, exclusively to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., Oakland, Philadelphia and Atlanta. Free Angela and All Political Prisoners tells the dramatic story of how a young professor’s social justice activism implicates her in a botched kidnapping attempt that ends with a bloody shootout, four dead, and her name on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. In this historical vérité style documentary, marking the 40th anniversary of her acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy, Angela Davis recounts the politics and actions that branded her a terrorist and simultaneously spurred a worldwide movement for her freedom as a political prisoner. At its core, the story wrestles with the meaning of political freedom in a democracy negotiated between the people and its government. Strong, attractive,...

I've just been informed that First Run Features film will open the film at Cinema Village theaters in New York City, on February 1, 2013. Featuring contributions from the likes of Cornel West, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Dick Gregory, Peter Coyote, Ruby Dee, M-1, Giancarlo Esposito, Amy Goodman, and many others, the new feature documentary, Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, focuses on Abu-Jamal's career as a prolific writer and journalist from Death Row. As the filmmakers note, the film in no way deals with Mumia’s case, but rather chronicles his life and work as a journalist, writer, philosopher, and...

Featuring contributions from the likes of Cornel West, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Dick Gregory, Peter Coyote, Ruby Dee, M-1, Giancarlo Esposito, Amy Goodman, and many others, the new feature documentary, Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, focuses on Abu-Jamal's career as a prolific writer and journalist from Death Row. As the filmmaker notes, the film in no way deals with Mumia’s case, but rather chronicles his life and work as a journalist, writer, philosopher, and revolutionary – both before and after his incarceration. Further, it follows Mumia’s early career in journalism as a writer for the Black...

Featuring contributions from the likes of Cornel West, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Dick Gregory, Peter Coyote, Ruby Dee, M-1, Giancarlo Esposito, Amy Goodman, and many others, the new feature documentary, Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, focuses on Abu-Jamal's career as a prolific writer and journalist from Death Row. As the filmmakers note, the film in no way deals with Mumia’s case, but rather chronicles his life and work as a journalist, writer, philosopher, and revolutionary – both before and after his incarceration. Further, it follows Mumia’s early career in journalism as a writer for the Black...

Mumia Abu-Jamal

By Alex Simon

"Wrapped in the sweet, false escape of dreams, I hear the unmistakable sounds of meat being beaten by blackjack, of bootfalls, yells, curses; and it merges into the mind's movie-making machine, evoking distant memories of some of the Philadelphia Police Department's greatest hits--on me. "Get off that man, you fat, greasy, racist, redneck pig bitch muthafucka!" My tired eyes snap open; the cracks, thuds, "oofs!" come in all too clear. Damn. No dream. Another dawn, another beating on B-Block, another shackled inmate at Pennsylvania's Huntingdon prison pummeled into the concrete by a squadron of guards." -Mumia Abu-Jamal "B-Block Days & Nightmares"

Stephen Vittoria is that rare commodity in Hollywood today: a filmmaker with a conscience. To be more precise, a filmmaker with a strong political conscience. After making two feature films, Black and White (aka Lou, Pat & Joe D., 1987) and Hollywood Boulevard (1996), as well as...

Ray Richmond is contributing to Deadline’s TCA coverage. Longtime political and human rights activist Angela Davis stopped by Pasadena and TCA this afternoon to help promote a new edition of the PBS series Independent Lens in which she appears. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is based on footage shot by Swedish journalists in the late 1960s and early ’70s to document the Black Power movement. Premiering on February 9, the show weaves footage shot on the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn and Oakland with interviews of movement leaders Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, Davis and numerous others. Davis is now a college professor, having spent the past 15 years teaching at the University of California – Santa Cruz. Her areas of expertise include the “history of consciousness” and feminist studies. She’s also the author of eight books, one of which documents her years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List in the...

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a remarkable documentary that offers a glimpse into the Black Power Movement in the United States. Shot by Swedish television journalists, the film is composed of audio and video clips from 1967-1975, and offers voice over from Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli, Ahmir-Khalib Thompson (Questlove), and more.

The film starts by focusing on Stokely Carmichael, who popularized the phrase “Black Power”. Carmichael was a very powerful activist who spoke out against Martin Luther King Jr’s nonviolent philosophy. Through various clips, we hear his reasoning behind his more militant stance. A revolution needed to happen.

Another powerful subject from the film, Angela Davis, is followed during her 1970 trial, where she was accused of being involved in the murder of a judge. The clips and audio follow her from the time she fled California through the end of her trial, which ended in 1972 with a verdict of not guilty.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman October 19th, 2011

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 brings together, for 90 fascinating minutes, a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish journalists who came to the Us drawn by stories of urban unrest and revolution. Gaining access to many of the leaders of the Black Power Movement – Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver among them, the filmmakers captured them in intimate moments and remarkably unguarded interviews. Thirty years later, this collection of unedited film was found languishing in the basement of a Swedish Television station. Director Goran Olsson discovered this footage and assembled a documentary chronicling the evolution of one of our nation’s most indelible turning points, the Black Power movement. Featuring music by Questlove and Om’Mas Keith, and commentary from prominent African- American artists and activists who were influenced by the struggle — including Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli,...

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

While feature films, both those rooted in a firm reality, such as Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, and those drawing allegorical points about race relations, such as American History X, are a dime a dozen, you positively have not seen it depicted like this. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, a documentary pieced together from Swedish television footage by director Göran Hugo Olsson, is unique in that it presents the jostling between black Americans and the establishment from an apparently neutral perspective, or at least one more affirmatively impartial than the sorts of coverage – i.e. propaganda on either side – that we’re used to.

While it only examines a brief window of the civil rights movement, it is a crucial one, beginning with Martin Luther King’s famous bus boycott and the passionately oppositional philosophy of Black Panther spokesman Stokeley Carmichael, while overlaying voiceover input from...

★★★★☆ One of the finest documentaries screening at this month's BFI London Film Festival, if not all year, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 has been a labour of love for its Swedish director Göran Olsson and production team (including Us actor turned co-producer Danny Glover). Olsson has poured over hundreds of hours of seemingly forgotten archive footage recorded by a group of his countrymen at the time of the Black Power Movement, and has succeeded in creating an incredibly coherent document of the historic events.

Key to the film's success is the quality of interviewee the original Swedish film crew managed to pin down. Black Power icons such as Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale and Angela Davis are all present, giving hitherto unseen accounts of their role in the struggle for African American equality.

Most interesting are the various different approaches and levels of response against oppression that the various figureheads condoned.

More than just a hipster oasis in the heart of Brixton, this five-screen cinema does its best to serve the whole community with a blend of mainstream, arthouse and political fare

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On location: The early 20th-century edifice of this lovely old institution sits on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Brixton High Street. Its cafe and bar spill out on to the recently done-up Windrush Square, customers and idling locals mingling under its spotlit central tree. While there's little parking, it's a minute away from Brixton tube on the high street, and buses shuttle from along both Coldharbour and the high street all night. The newer half of the building, with its smoked-glass roofing, joins the building to the Brixton public library. The older, more ornate half, sits on the corner among the clubs and bars and fast-food joints,...